Guardian
by T-1000000
Summary: A new Guardian learns of his destiny-to serve the Labyrinth with his puzzle box. But what happens when this Guardian looks to the stars...and spurns his destiny? What if he decides to build his own?
1. 0:Seed

_#0:Seed_

Pain and pleasure; when viewed by mankind, they are quickly distinguishable from each other, two extremes gazing upon each other from the opposite ends of the spectrum.

And yet, some pleasures can only be attained through pain; not just physical pain, like when a man murders those who have wronged him. The mental pain drives the pleasure further and further; the longing for sex with an attractive member of the opposite gender to prove acceptance and superiority, a growing craving for all forms of human intercourse.

But for all human beings, it reaches a halt.

It is when their desires take them to a realm of alien suffering, where the line is not only blurred between pain and pleasure but utterly wiped out, that they long for a return to a normal life on Earth. But they are far too gone, for it is their desires that have trapped them in a labyrinth that they will never be able to escape, no matter how much they navigate.

It is their desires that give them the puzzle boxes, configurations that, when solved, whisk the solver away to the Labyrinth. It is a realm that is constantly turning and changing, just like its ruler and creator, the diamond shaped god Leviathan. Realizing that Satan had simply become the warden of Hell and the damned souls, Leviathan realized that light cannot function without dark, and so he abandoned his post as an angel and sought to become a god opposite to God Himself.

And so, the Labyrinth was created, and Leviathan became the god of desire, hunger, and the flesh. But Leviathan sought order in contrast to God's incredibly chaotic and unpredictable humans, and the first species he had created-the chimeric Engineers-soon found their purpose in creating the footsoldiers of order.

Cenobites.

Some solvers of the puzzle boxes are not simply obsessed; they are masters of whatever deviant activity they participate in. Because of this, Leviathan sees potential in them, and they are taken to the chambers of the Engineers where they are changed in more ways than one. Stripped and hooked onto chains and tentacles, their bodies are horribly scarified and parts of them are changed to fit an aspect of their personality; soon, they are bound in skin-tight leather and their blood is altered to become a bizarre blue liquid, before the final stage of the transformation. The Engineers wipe the memories of the Cenobite's past human life, for Leviathan does not tolerate any chaos in his realm or subjects.

Though the Cenobite known as Pinhead is favored by Leviathan, it is Orno who creates the gateways into the Labyrinth. Originally a human who was constantly searching for an equation to solve his own personal problems, he had been taken by Leviathan and declared the creator of the new puzzle boxes after the human named Phillip Lemarchand had created the first box:the Lament Configuration. With his face stretched out by a metal ring and three metal arrows pointing to the top of his head, he looked through the minds of a male human who had been dragged into the Labyrinth until he discovered the "equation" of their mind and used it to create a new puzzle box.

But even the Labyrinth needs protection, and it grows weak without any new Cenobites or humans for them to experiment on. Once he has used a mans "mind equation" to create a puzzle box, Orno fills the man with his seed and sends him back to Earth to have sex with a human woman. Afterwards, the man-who is referred to as "raw material"-commits suicide and the woman will die giving birth to the child.

A Guardian.

Though they look human, in reality, Guardians are tall, skeletal draconic creatures. When they reach the age of sixteen, Orno comes to Earth to reveal to them their true form and species, their abilities, and their destiny:the puzzle box they will guard for the rest of eternity.

It is lonely and unhappy, the life of a Guardian. To find a human seeking pleasure, to make sure they do not take too long to use the puzzle box, to take the box back when the human is gone, and to save it from destruction:those are the only four things a Guardian has to live for. And yet, it is a duty they fulfill without complaint, no matter what they may be forced to endure, and however little gratitude they receive from the realm they guard.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

_**June 4…**_

The room was made to look like the writhing bodies of naked women, all of them screaming for sexual pleasures. Standing in the center of the room was an incredibly thin, frail black man, his eyes dry and shriveled and his ribs jutting out of his chest. Behind him two women had their mouths open, hooked chains embedded in the mans back and stopping at the back of his waist, leaving his back torn wide open. Two more women embedded in the floor spewed chains digging in between his legs, splitting his legs wide apart.

His name was Marcus Palantine, but here, he was just another "subject", as they called him. The Cenobites, that was what that man with the stretched face had called himself; Orno, was what he said his name was. The creature had looked through his mind, something Marcus did not wish to remember. It had felt like somebody was drilling through his skull, little fragments of the bone cutting into his brain. He had gotten used to the chains hooked into him, though; what really pissed him off was all these women screaming at him.

_Perhaps I should have stuck with the rape_, Marcus thought to himself. _Maybe...trying to discover love wasn't such a great idea…_

Suddenly, the wall of women before him parted, and _he _stepped in. His face stretched out by a metal ring, three arrows pointing to the top of his head, his shredded chest exposed.

Orno.

"How do you feel?" Orno asked him, his voice barely intelligible; it sounded oddly similar to a man with extreme congestion in his throat. The wall behind him remained parted.

"Fuck off!" Marcus spat. "You put me in this cell filled with a bunch of whores I can't even rape, you tear my back open, you don't feed me or give me anything to drink, I can't move, and you have the nerve to ask me how I _feel? _Oh, I'd feel a lot better if your throat was torn out and your face-!"

The chains digging into Marcus suddenly retracted, and the women they came from immediately started shrieking. He fell and screeched in pain, reaching for the area between his legs as Orno simply grinned and chuckled.

"Do not force me to remind you, Marcus, that you are in no position to threaten me. You stand here thinking of how your life could have gone differently, and yet, you regret nothing. You are indecisive, and I find such a trait to be...unruly. But fret not, for it shall not last for much longer."

Orno then flipped Marcus over and a chain shot out of his wrist cuff and into Marcus' anus. His screeching instantly increased, sounding like a rabid animal in its death throes. As soon as it had shot out, the chain retracted and Orno gently moved his hand over Marcus' wounds, which he quickly healed.

"Wha-?" Marcus gasped, his shrieking stopping as he felt his healed back and the area between his legs.

"You should be glad, Marcus; you shall see Earth again...perhaps for the final time. Not every man is as lucky as you are, being my raw material. It is a great deed to carry a Cenobite's seed, to hold my craving…"

And with that, he picked up Marcus and threw him out of the cell and into the void between worlds.

_**One minute later…**_

Marcus' entire head throbbed. His eyes opened slowly, his vision flickering back as the sunlight touched his naked body. The moment his vision returned, he lied on the ground for at least two more minutes, inhaling and exhaling as he waited for the pain in his head to subside.

He pushed himself up and looked around, hoping he was back in Seattle. But this didn't look like Seattle; this place looked like Hell bursting through the earth. Garbage lined the alleyway in an almost synchronous manner, while the bricks were falling out and cracked.

Marcus got to his feet and slowly edged out of the alley. For some reason, he didn't care that he was completely naked; he just wanted..._something_, but he didn't know what.

He reeled back as he got a whiff of the perfume. The saliva in his mouth started bubbling and his muscles stiffened. Marcus didn't know what was going on, yet it felt so…

...so _right._

The woman then came into his view, walking away from the building she had just exited. He immediately sized her up:a perfectly spherical rear, protruding breasts, straight long black hair, and smooth dark skin.

_Dad likes._

The instinct in Marcus' mind sprang to attention. Time seemed to slow down as he sprinted towards the woman, who heard the pounding on the ground and finally saw the naked man ready to pounce. She didn't have time to register any of it, though, as she was quickly knocked to the ground.

Marcus then grabbed her skirt and underwear and tore them off before he made his move. He felt as if though every ounce of him was entering the woman, and his strength and drive waned quickly. He realized his job was done and he stood up.

Marcus turned around and shambled back to the alley, the woman beginning to scream. It didn't matter to him; his job was done.

He was on the street now. He didn't notice the eight-wheeler even as his entire skeleton was torn to pieces by its wheels.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

_**July 12…**_

"I'm not having a baby!"

"If you're not gonna have it, who is?"

"Nobody! I'm not having it!"

The young woman and her mother stared at each other for several tense seconds, the mood making it feel like minutes. Behind the mother was her husband, a stout bald black man who squinted down at his daughter like a hawk searching for its prey.

"You saying you gonna kill your own child?" the mother asked, unable to hide her shock.

"It's not even my child! I never wanted it, some motherfucker just-!"

The mother slapped her daughter across her mouth, while her husbands eyes flashed open wide, almost bulging out of their sockets with anger.

"So it's not enough to murder your own child? Now you think, because you're in a foul mood, you can curse in my house?"

"_YOU DON'T HIT ME LIKE THAT! _You think that your religion is gonna do any of us any good when I've just been raped by a man who's been missing for eight months?! A serial rapist?! I'm not raising the child of a man who raped innocent people!"

"We'll help you, that's why we're here!" the father suddenly said.

"What? What can you do? You'll raise a child of rape in Detroit, and it's gonna be like every animal out there raised by its grandparents! You'll just be raising another murderer, another rapist! My child doesn't deserve to be alive!" the daughter screamed at her parents, tears forming in her eyes and her last words beginning to sound warped like a broken recording.

And with that, she turned around and walked out, slamming the door behind her.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

_**March 12…**_

"Heartbeat is slowing down! Only thirty seven beats per minute!"

In the hospital room, the four doctors were trying to do everything they could to both keep Amber Randle alive and help her give birth, but in the case of the former, they were failing miserably.

"Skin's gotten cold and rough!" on the doctors yelled as she removed her fingers from the veins along Amber's neck.

Amber Randle herself was barely holding on as she coughed and heaved in her bed, her strength having given out several hours ago. Her eyes stared into space and her face was blank, as if though she felt no pain and did not care that she was not far from death.

"The child is starting to come out!"

"Ms. Randle! Ms. Randle, can you hear me? We need you to push just a bit more, just a bit more-we can get the baby out faster!" one of the doctors shouted.

"Heartbeat is only twenty nine beats per minute!"

All of the shouting and ordering was drowned out by Amber Randle's sudden shrieking; to them, it sounded more like some animal being dissected alive.

They had all dealt with births before, but they sincerely wished they would never have to hear that noise ever again in their lives.

As soon as it came, it went, and the shrieking was replaced with the sobbing that signalled a new life.

"Donovan...Donovan…" Amber muttered.

"What did she say?" the female doctor asked.

"I think she said 'Donovan'" one of the other doctors answered.

Strangely, the crying mixed well with the sound of a flatline.

"Flatline! Come on, come on, get the defibrillator out! Hurry up, get it out!"

"Clear!"

The defibrillator sparked to life and Amber Randle's body shook violently before it stopped.

"Pulse is still dead!"

"Do it one more time!"

"Clear!"

The machine still flatlined.

One of the doctors sighed, running his hand over his beard before he looked up at the clock.

"Time of death, call it...10:46 PM."

The doctors shut Amber's eyes and pulled the blanket over her before they carefully separated the baby from its umbilical cord.

Donovan Randle cried in protest as he was separated from his mother, this time for good.

(_**NEXT TIME: **_Donovan Randle reaches his sixteenth birthday. He thinks it's just another birthday, like everyone elses...until he receives a birthday card from a man going by the name "Orno." Things go from bad to worse as Donovan discovers what he really is and how far his strength can go… All this in _Guardian #1:God Among Men._)


	2. God Among Men

_#1: God Among Men_

"Donovan, wake up! It's 7:00!"

Donovan Randle lay in bed even as he he heard his grandmother Sarah Randle's voice. Just for ten more minutes-he wanted to remain in bed. To rest his head against the pillow and close his eyes. He had slept for at least eight hours, but he still just wanted to sleep. He didn't know why, but his head had started throbbing when he had woken up three minutes ago, stopping and starting. His back also felt unusually rigid, as if though he had sat up in bed crouched over and slept on his stomach all night.

But Donovan knew he had to wake up sooner rather than later. Today was, after all, his sixteenth birthday. He had to go to school, and when he came home, his grandmother and grandfather Christopher and his two uncles and aunt would be waiting for him. There would be a cake, and his grandfather had told him that somebody had mailed them a card and present. He had told Donovan that he didn't know who, but he hadn't unsealed the card or opened the small box.

After all, it was Donovan's present and card.

He got out of bed and pulled up his blankets, folding the top over the bottom, before placing his pillow over the top. Donovan first changed his underwear before he pulled off his cotton pants and pulled on his jeans, buckling the belt and buttoning up. He changed his shirt and socks, picked up his clothes from yesterday and shut the door behind him, before he hurried down the stairs.

"Donovan, it's 7:04! W-!"

"I'm here" Donovan called as he reached the final stair.

"It's about time, you've gotta be in school by 9:00! Come on, it's your sixteenth birthday, your breakfast's getting cold!" his grandmother snapped at him. Donovan walked past the table to the laundry room and tossed his clothes into the basket, eyeing his breakfast as he walked by: eight breakfast sausages, a sandwich, and fifteen pancakes.

"Now what the hell are you yelling for? I'm retired, I don't have to go to work!" Donovan's grandfather Christopher, a tall, stout elderly black man, shouted. His large round glasses hung loosely from his nose, and though his hair was growing whiter every day, his beard remained and his skin remained as dark as it always had been.

"It's about time you got out of bed too!" Sarah Randle nagged. "Just 'cause you're old doesn't give you a right to sleep for fifteen hours while I have to wake up and make breakfast for Donovan-!"

"Well where's mine?" Christopher Randle asked as he picked up a pancake, only to have his hand slapped down by his wife.

"This is Donovan's breakfast! You go make yourself something" she said, walking into the laundry room.

"Come on, grandpa, you can help yourself!" Donovan chuckled while he picked up another sausage with his fork.

"Damn right! Just 'cause it's not my birthday, doesn't mean I can't eat the cake! I swear, your grandmother's thinking sometimes…" his grandfather complained.

Donovan had never understood his grandfather's need to add a curse word into almost every sentence. Even though he proclaimed himself an uncompromising Lutheran, he constantly swore and took the name of God in vain, even when it was incredibly unnecessary.

"Grandpa, if I see him today...can I ask Corey to come to the party today?" Donovan asked, referring to Corey Shuster, one of his few friends at school.

Unfortunately for Donovan, his grandmother walked back into the kitchen at that point.

"No" his grandmother and grandfather said in unison. "Donovan, you know there's something I don't like about that Corey boy!" his grandmother reminded him.

"But grandma, you can't just judge somebody based off some hunch you-"

"No, Donovan, and that is final!" she yelled. "Besides, you're gonna have your family at the party-why do you need some weird deep voiced white boy at your party?"

"So what if he's white?" Donovan asked. "Why does that mean he can't come?"

"You know what the white people here in _Detroit_ are like, Donovan."

"In Detroit, all the blacks are thugs, and all the whites are psychos" his grandfather chuckled, leaning back in his chair.

It pained Donovan to hear that from his own grandfather, even if it was a joke. It was far too ignorant and mean-spirited; hadn't he actually met any of the people in Detroit? It was true, there were the hoods and the mentally ill, but the majority of those that he had met went to his school. Most of the blacks and whites he had met were decent people who seemed most bothered by the fact that they were immediately labeled because they lived in Detroit. They seemed rather apathetic when it came to other peoples problems, but not malevolent.

But at the same time, it was the other thing that his grandmother had said that still bothered him. His family was coming for his birthday, like always; but all of them were his mother's brothers and sister.

"Grandma, why does nobody from dad's side of the family ever come for my birthday?" he asked.

"Oh hush, Donovan, finish your breakfast! You're gonna be sixteen, you should know better than to keep asking such silly questions!" was her answer. She wasn't really paying attention, though; instead, she was rummaging through the fridge.

"But why?"

"Because we don't know your dad is" his grandfather said, his voice now uneasy and his expression souring. "Your mom just met some random guy, got knocked up, and died right after you were born."

"Now stop it, Christopher! Don't remind the boy of how he came on his sixteenth birthday!" his grandmother scolded him. "Donovan, hurry up! You need to brush your teeth!"

Donovan still didn't understand why his grandparents talked about his birth in such hushed and bitter tones. So many children were born from rape and wedlock all over the world-what made his birth so particularly difficult to talk about?

But his grandparents' words and expressions still stung him, as if though he really shouldn't have been born, as if though he just wasn't right in their eyes. He could have blamed their thinking on their Christian faith, but he couldn't; he was one too, and his grandparents still believed what they had been taught fifty years ago. He bowed his head and finished his breakfast in silence.

For a moment, the smell of the remaining sausages felt..._closer_, but it faded quickly enough.

_**Three hours later…**_

Donovan couldn't say that he hated his Pre-AP English class, but he knew he was right when he said it was the most boring class. There were just too many essays, and essays were the only things his class did. They weren't even interesting essays; the prompts were convoluted, asking for far too much when it came to textual evidence and rhetorical devices. And the teacher, Ms. Bluemard, was far too hard on her students. Her sarcasm was beyond spiteful and her grading methods too demanding, checking even the smallest of details, demanding overanalysis of every source, and treating the sophomore class as if though it were a college course.

His neck ached from forty five minutes of staring down at the black and white lined essay paper. He wasn't even done with the second body paragraph when the digital timer on Ms. Bluemard's computer screen and projected onto the overhead rang. He nearly jumped out of his seat, the ringing of the timer pounding into his ears like the industrial pneumatic drill used in his Engineering class.

"Okay, no matter where you are in your essay, I want you to stop and turn it into the tray" Bluemard told the class. To Donovan, though, it sounded as if though she had screamed it right into his ear. He held his right ear, the vibrations of the soundwaves still running through his head. The rest of the class stood up from their seats and walked over to the turn-in tray, sliding in their essays. Donovan took a deep breath and finally walked over to the tray, pushing his essay in; once he did, he walked back to his desk and saw that everyone else had either turned it in or were close to the tray…

...except for one student.

His baggy pants were camouflaged and two sizes too big for him, just as his blue denim vest was ripped and patched. His head was shaved but his sideburns reached down to his chin, creating a greasy and short goatee.

"Why are you still writing?" Bluemard asked Wayne Park, who looked up to face the woman with an incredibly annoyed scowl, as if though the answer should be obvious.

"Because I'm not done" Wayne Park answered, speaking slowly to make it a question as much as it was a simple statement.

"You're not even halfway through the first page, when will you be done?" Bluemard asked, but everyone knew better than to answer that question; everyone but Park.

"Man, can you fuck off?! If you would just give us more time, maybe I could finish because then, I could get my damn thoughts straight!" Park yelled. Donovan closed his eyes and laid his head on his desk, reeling in utter pain. Park's shouting sounded like someone yelling into a megaphone right next to him.

"Okay, you can step outside if you're gonna talk to me like that" Bluemard said, her voice still calm and brimming with potential sarcasm; and yet, underneath that, there was an obvious layer of barely fettered anger, something no student would be stupid enough to challenge.

But then, Wayne Park was in a league of his own.

"What are you gonna do to make me, nigger? You think just because you tell me to leave, I'm gonna do it? Then why don't you go clear my fucking cotton field?"

"Either you can step outside right now, or I can leave you in here with everyone else!"

"What, you think I'm scared of these fuckin' niggers? You people can't even speak English right, so you can't even teach this shit! What makes you think you niggers can fight?" Park screamed as he picked up his pen.

"Okay then, I'm leaving!" Bluemard groaned, throwing her hands up in defeat while walking to the door. But everyone knew what she was doing.

Park ran towards her with his pen, her back turned to him. Bluemard ducked and grabbed his left arm before wrapping her own arm around his neck.

"No! Stop fucking touching me, nigger! You have no right to put your hands on me, I can sue your black ass-!" Park screeched, his fury still audible even when Bluemard dragged him into the hallway and slammed him into the room of another English classroom. Soon, the other English teacher ran out and joined Bluemard in dragging Park down to the office.

"I don't have to come to your shitty school ever again! I'm gonna leave, and I'm gonna make sure Nigger Central, Michigan pays for the way it treats my people-!" were the last words Donovan heard Park shout before he and the teachers were too far away to be heard.

Strangely, it sounded closer than he thought it should have.

_**Six hours later…**_

Donovan could see his uncle David's red Chevy Camaro in his grandparents' driveway, along with his uncle Marcos' black Dodge Challenger and his aunt Debra's white Honda CRV. He knew that it meant his birthday party was ready to start, even though it was only him and his family from his mother's side. But that wasn't what mattered to him; what mattered to Donovan was that he would be able to enjoy being around people who actually cared for him, and they would allow him to relax and enjoy the one day where he was treated with respect like every human being should.

More importantly, it would allow him to ignore the strange pains he had been feeling throughout the day. If they didn't come back, of course.

He ran up to the door and rang the bell. Waiting anxiously on the porch, he heard his grandmother's rose bushes rustle behind him. Donovan turned around and expected to see one of the roaming neighborhood cats, but there was nothing there. For a split second, he thought he saw what looked like a person's shadow standing next to aunt Debra's CRV, but once again, he saw nothing. Donovan pushed it aside, realizing his mind was playing tricks on him, as the door swung open.

"Oh, happy birthday, Donovan!" his grandmother exclaimed as she pulled him into a hug while dragging him into the house all at once.

"Thank you, grandma!" was all he was able to say in response right before his grandmother let him go.

"Happy birthday, Donovan!" his grandfather laughed, clasping his shoulder. He stepped aside to let a huge, black bearded, and balding man greet him next.

"Donnie!" the man heartily chuckled. He extended his hand and nearly crushed Donovan's own in the handshake that followed.

"Uncle Marcus! How are you?" he asked warmly.

"I'm alright Donnie, I just want to tell you happy birthday!" his uncle Marcos answered, stepping aside for a tall yet thin man with a huge mustache and a can of Coors in his hand.

"Happy birthday Donovan, how you doin'?" the man asked through a thick nasally voice and rather crooked yellow teeth.

"I'm doing good uncle David, how 'bout you?" Donovan asked his uncle David. His uncle paused to down a hefty amount of the beer.

"You know, I'm good, I'm good."

"Donovan, I'm so happy for you! You're finally sixteen years old!" a dark skinned, long armed woman greeted him, her curly black hair wrapped into a tight bun.

"Thank you so much, aunt Debra!" he said as he hugged her.

"How do you feel? Do you feel any different?" she asked him.

"No, not really; not yet, at least."

"Oh, come on! I wanna eat this cake already!" his grandfather groaned.

"Now quit whining! It's right here!" his grandmother scolded him. She led the family to the kitchen, where a thick round black cake lined with white frosting sat on the table. Atop the cake were sixteen burning blue candles, and six paper plates and forks surrounded the cake.

"Now, sit down here Donovan" his grandmother told him, pointing at the chair at the far end of the table, where his grandfather usually sat.

"Happy birthday to you…" the five adults started singing as Donovan's grandmother lowered the huge knife down onto the cake.

"...happy birthday to you…"

Donovan noticed a plain white card on the counter; it read "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" in orange letters.

"...happy birthday to Donovan…"

Next to the card, there was a small sealed cardboard box.

"...happy birthday to you!"

Donovan blew out all of the candles and his grandmother finished cutting out a slice of the cake, which she placed on Donovan's paper plate.

"Now, Donovan" his grandfather started to say, "I told you about that card and present I got, and how I didn't want to read and show it you until your birthday. Now, I gotta ask...which of you three sent us the card and present?"

David, Debra, and Marcus looked at each other, bemused. Their frowns and raised eyebrows betrayed their lack of any answers, and Donovan's grandfather looked back at the card and box.

"Umm...okay. I don't know who else could have sent it, since nobody else really knows Donovan-"

"Maybe it was Corey" Donovan interjected through a mouthful of cake.

"No, we would never let that freak send us anything!" his grandfather laughed. Donovan glared at him intensely, but his grandfather didn't see it and instead grabbed a fresh knife from one of the drawers and cut through the wax that sealed the card. He threw the knife back into the drawer and opened the card.

"Red ink? Well, I'll be damned if I've ever seen that…" he grumbled before he cleared his throat and started reading the card.

"Dear Donovan Randle, I know that it is your sixteenth birthday. I wish to congratulate you for possessing the sheer determination to survive up to this point, for I know how cruel and wicked the people of this world are. Once your party is over, though, I cannot wait to finally meet you and speak with you,face-to-face. It is about time that I tell you, the child of a dead mother and Seattle serial rapist Marcus Palantine, your true destiny. Inside that cardboard box is the key to your destiny, and once you take it, I shall arrange a meeting between the two of us so you may begin your new life in earnest. Leviathan needs creatures such as yourself to keep the peace within the Labyrinth and to keep in check the balance between the chaos of the world you believed you lived in and the order of your true home. I hope to erase your delusion and pull back the veil of your reality. Most sincerely, Orno."

"What kind of stupid name is Orno? You have to be a pretty big idiot to give your kid the name Orno!" David snorted, pulling out a lighter and cigarette, which were promptly blocked by his mother.

"Now you know what I told you about smoking in my house, young man!" she snapped and at the same time, Donovan's grandfather tore open the cardboard box and pulled out a small golden puzzle box. The puzzle box was covered with many small, intricate markings at every corner, and at the top and bottom, there was a carving resembling a gold star, rays of yellow light pouring from it.

Donovan stared at the puzzle box through his reddening eyes. His hand shook as he dropped his fork onto the plate, his slice of cake only halfway finished.

"Why did you never tell me?" he quietly whimpered. He felt something in the back of his throat.

"What was that?" his grandmother asked.

Donovan suddenly stood up from his chair and slapped the box out of his grandfather's hand before he pushed past his grandparents and stomped over to the front door faster than even he thought he could walk.

"Wait, Donovan-!" his grandfather called.

"Why did you hide it from me? What's so wrong with telling me that my dad was a serial rapist?! Why are you so ashamed?!" he screamed at her and his grandfather, while his aunt and uncles stared at him, dumbfounded. He hurt his own ears. He didn't care.

"Donovan, we never wanted to tell you because you were born out of wedlock! You're a rape baby, and nobody likes that!" his grandmother tried to calm him down, but Donovan would have none of it.

"Do you know how many people are born from rapists and dads not even their moms know? I would have been alright knowing that my dad was a rapist! It would give me peace of mind, let me know where I came from! What else have you been hiding from me, huh? What else?!"

"Donovan, what are you-" his grandfather tried to ask.

"You know what! That box! Orno! The guy who said he's gonna meet me! Leviathan! What does it all mean? Who are they?!" he asked.

"Donovan, we have absolutely no idea-!"

"Yes, you do! If you've hidden my father from me my whole life, what reason do I have to believe that you haven't hidden anything else?"

"Now Donnie-" Marcos Randle started to calmly say, before Donovan unlocked the door and threw it open.

"No! I'm done! Stay away from me! Stay away, unless you can tell me the truth! I don't want any more lies and secrets just because you think I'll be ashamed! Stay away!"

And with that, he walked outside and slammed the door shut. As he ran away from his grandparents' house, he let the tears leave his eyes. He didn't know where to go, he just knew he didn't want to be anywhere near them...and that box.

_**One hour later…**_

Donovan didn't know where he was, but he had to be deep in the heart of Detroit, judging by the closed and rotting buildings, shattered windows, and garbage lined streets. The air reeked of car exhaust and peeling paint, and several blocks ahead, he could hear the sirens of multiple police cars.

"Hey, kid" a voice called out to him. Donovan turned to look at the man, the tears having left a while ago. The man was dressed in a thin black jacket which reached down to his knees, though it did nothing to hide his sagging pants. His eyes were hidden by a pair of huge, circular sunglasses, which were completely unnecessary in the gray afternoon of Detroit.

"Listen sir, I'm not in the mood-" Donovan sighed before the man started pouting.

"Aww, come on, kid! I just need you to help me carry my groceries into my house" the man whined. Donovan didn't know why, but he thought he could..._smell _something on the man. But he put it aside, and decided that if this man just needed help carrying his heavy bags of groceries, it wouldn't hurt anyone.

He walked over to where the man was standing, and the moment he walked up to the man, he was slammed into the unforgiving brick wall. He tasted something metallic in his mouth, and as the man held down Donovan's arms, he heard the deep and throaty laughter of several others nearby.

"Alex! Give me the knife!" the man commanded. The man then leaned in close to Donovan's ear and gently whispered, "I've met some dumbasses in my life, kid, but you? Youre in a league of your own!" He then licked Donovan's ear, and Donovan reeled as he smelled salmon and pork on the man's breath.

"I was trying to help you!" Donovan cried.

"Well, we'll see what that does for you!"

The man let go of Donovan's right arm and grabbed the knife given to him by the man named Alex. The moment he let go, Donovan's vision blurred. The landscape surrounding him turned into little more than a haze and his peripheral vision seemed to increase. Something ran through his head and his heartbeat shot upwards by tenfold, pumping blood through his body at an alarming rate which would have left any other man dead, and he soon _smelled _the adrenaline being produced in his body.

Donovan grabbed the man's jacket and shoved him off before punching him in the center of his forehead. The man went flying back and crashed through the brick wall, and as he sailed through the air, his head twisted and Donovan could clearly hear the snap of his neck.

He had just killed a man, but his mind didn't register it; everything he saw was a blur, and all he could think of was the blood running through his head.

He shoved his fingers into the next man's cheek and pulled back; he didn't have quite a good grip on it, and so the man's face and the muscle that had been behind it messily dropped to the ground. What had once been the man's face was little more than a red, bloody skull with a tongue and eyes. The man shrieked, his shriek being similar to a nail being struck with a saw blade. Donovan's eardrums rang in protest, but he ignored it.

Another man tried to run away, but he was too slow in his decision. Donovan punched him in the back and instantly shattered his spine, sending him flying through the front of a house across the street at the same time. A fourth man tackled him to the ground, and in response, Donovan threw him up and sent him into the sky; he never came down. Of the last two men, one had pulled out his phone and was obviously trying to call the police.

He would be the last one.

His friend charged at Donovan, and received a kick to the groin for his troubles. The moment Donovan's foot connected with the groin, a red cloud erupted and briefly obscured his hazy vision. The man fell through the brick wall of the building that Donovan had been pushed against, and once he hit the ground, his screeching pierced the air.

"I'm being atta-!" the last man tried to yell into the phone when it was torn out of his hands. Donovan rammed it into the left side of his lower throat and dragged it across, spraying blood onto Donovan's face and jacket before it started flowing down his chest. But Donovan wasn't finished; his next move was to shove the phone through the man's stomach, shanking him nearly thirty times before he finished with the phone in the man's face.

The man's body fell back and hit the ground. When it did, Donovan's vision returned to normal, and now, he couldn't ignore the shrieking and screeching of the faceless man and his castrated companion.

When his vision came back, so did his mind. His eyes bulged and he clutched his stomach as he looked upon the inhuman carnage, the pools of blood forming beneath the phone man, the faceless man, and the castrated man. The tears didn't form in his eyes; they immediately poured down his face. Where there were six people, there were now shattered corpses and two nearly dead humans who were not far from their friends. They had tried to murder him in cold blood, and what had he done? He had proven he was no better than them; these were still people, humans who might have had families and friends and jobs, and he had ripped it all away. Whose right was it to kill anybody? Not his, and yet, that was what he had done.

He walked over to the knife the man had dropped as he had crashed through the wall. He knew it was wrong-but what did it matter now? He had just butchered six people as if though they were animals; what did his own life matter? For what he did, he was going to Hell anyway, and nothing would change that.

Donovan fell to his knees and pulled up the sleeve of his jacket before he picked up the knife. He moved the knife towards his wrist…

...and the screaming of the faceless man and the castrated man stopped, a sick noise reaching his ears.

He looked up and saw a black chain, tipped with an arrowhead, tear itself out of the faceless man's chest before it retracted and vanished. But not even that was as bizarre and horrifying as the creature before him.

It was unbelievably pale, thought most of it's body was covered with incredibly tight black leather. The only parts of it's body that were not hidden were it's hands and chest, an ugly canvas of hundreds of deep slashes. It's face was stretched out by a large metal ring, with three arrows pointing to the top of it's head.

And in it's right hand was the puzzle box.

"Donovan Randle" the creature rasped, it's voice similar to that of a man with extreme congestion in his throat. "I do believe we _almost _met, outside your grandparents' house."

"No, what-get away from me! Don't come near me!" Donovan cried, backing away from the hideous humanoid thing. To it's credit, the creature didn't become angry; instead, it merely grinned and laughed.

"You have accepted so many deviants in your life so far; what is so different about me? I say, it is rather hypocritical, but then, living amongst these chaotic primates instills such attitudes in one" it scoffed. It extended the puzzle box to Donovan.

"You left this behind."

"What did you do to them? I swear, if you touched any of them-" Donovan attempted to threaten.

"What? What shall you do, kill me? Just like these broken parts?" the creature asked, motioning to the fallen criminals. "Besides, you cannot touch me-I exceed the power of any mere Guardian. But you should not worry; I made sure they did not even see me. I simply came here to tell you of the destiny that this puzzle box holds for you, like so many others."

"What are you talking about? Who are you?"

"I am partly your father, but not truly. I am the one who knows every equation that leads to desire, to order, to Leviathan. I am the smith of every one of man's most twisted desires and wants and needs. My name is Orno."

(_**NEXT ISSUE: **_Donovan's true identity and his destiny are revealed to him by Orno. With it comes a crossroad. Will he go along with the demands of the Labyrinth, or will he follow his own path? All this in _Guardian #2: One or the Other._)


	3. One or the Other

_#2: One or the Other_

"Donovan Randle" the creature rasped, it's voice similar to that of a man with extreme congestion in his throat. "I do believe we _almost _met, outside your grandparents' house."

"No, what-get away from me! Don't come near me!" Donovan cried, backing away from the hideous humanoid thing. To its credit, the creature didn't become angry; instead, it merely grinned and laughed.

"You have accepted so many deviants in your life so far; what is so different about me? I say, it is rather hypocritical, but then, living amongst these chaotic primates instills such attitudes in one" it scoffed. It extended the puzzle box to Donovan.

"You left this behind."

"What did you do to them? I swear, if you touched any of them-" Donovan attempted to threaten.

"What? What shall you do, kill me? Just like these broken parts?" the creature asked, motioning to the fallen criminals. "Besides, you cannot touch me-I exceed the power of any mere Guardian. But you should not worry; I made sure they did not even see me. I simply came here to tell you of the destiny that this puzzle box holds for you, like so many others."

"What are you talking about? Who are you?"

"I am partly your father, but not truly. I am the one who knows every equation that leads to desire, to order, to Leviathan. I am the smith of every one of man's most twisted desires and wants and needs. My name is Orno."

_Most sincerely, Orno…_

"Y-you're the one who gave me that, that birthday card!" Donovan realized as the words of the birthday card read to him started coming back.

Had it really not been that long ago?

"Of course I am" Orno said, almost as if though he was annoyed. "I have always held a certain..._fondness _for the close greetings of this species."

"Species?" Donovan asked. "But you're saying-you're not human!"

"Do I _look _human to you, child?" Orno scoffed. "Do you think I could stand the constant differences of their loose clothing, the mixing of their flesh pigments? You most likely believed that you could, as you have adopted their ways for so long, having lived under their shadow for sixteen years. Every one of your kind once believed that they could."

In his head, Donovan was wondering just what this man-though even that was difficult to immediately discern- was talking about. Did this man's people wear something completely different from what he knew of? And what about their skin? Were they all this pale? And what was he trying to say with that last sentence…

_Every one of your kind-_

"Wait-you mean, that I'm...I'm not human either?" Donovan whimpered, looking down at his hands, at the shoes he was wearing. They looked just like every other human's shoes and hands, they were just like every other black person's body! How could he not be human? He spoke like he always had, in the same earthly tone in the english language. He was a _human!_

"Have you seen any human being perform the actions you have just committed?" Orno asked. The smile on his face made it clear that such a question was not really meant to be answered.

"But, but-I talk like them! I look exactly like them! It has to be some kind of illusion you're doing! I am a human being!" Donovan screamed, backing away from the humanoid beast even as his mind began telling him that this "Orno" might be telling the truth.

"Think of retreating."

"What?" Donovan flatly said. Now this creature _really _was not making any sense.

"Imagine yourself retreating" Orno told him. "Imagine pulling your body-the one you walk with right now-into your mind. Imagine pushing out a new form, one that has lied dormant within the deep recesses of your mind; your _true _form."

"What are you even say-?"

"Imagine it! Think of it! Close your eyes, and concentrate; pull this body in, push out the reality."

"Why should I listen to anything you have to say?" Donovan inquired. His head started aching again, but it was worse than it was in the morning.

"This is your destiny" Orno told him, holding the puzzle box high in the air. "I do not lie or jest, Donovan; do it."

"Will you leave me alone if I do?" he asked Orno.

"We shall see, but first, you must do as I say."

He realized he had no choice but to try to understand what Orno was talking about, and that he would not be left alone if he didn't follow the creature's orders. Donovan closed his eyes and inhaled a large gust of air through his nostrils, remaining still for several seconds before he exhaled. All the while, he was thinking:

_Pull in, pull in...exit…_

"You must actually will your body to do it, not simply stand there and think of it!" Orno told him in a frustrated tone. Donovan's own frustration increased, his face wrinkling and his fists tightening as he tried to push whatever it was Orno told him to. To him, it was like driving his brain into the base of his skull.

"Relax yourself!"

How was he supposed to relax himself if he wanted to push a _concept _out of his brain? This Orno was seriously beginning to get on his nerves; really, if it weren't for him, none of the things that had happened today would have happened. It was because of him that his mother had been raped and had died while giving birth today, and those six men would still be alive and capable of being arrested to serve time for their crimes.

God, it was happening again; the urge was looming over him. It was like those six psychopaths all over again, he wouldn't be able to control himself against Orno, but he couldn't stop the urge from seeping out-

The feeling of lightness suddenly came over Donovan. His eyes flashed open, but he barely managed to see his whole body beginning to fade before it was replaced by _something _skeletal.

The first thing Donovan noticed besides the skeletal feet and ankles was that he was suddenly taller; a lot taller. The ground was more than six feet below, and when he looked up, he saw that the roofs of the two buildings were much closer. He touched one of the bricks in the wall, only to pull it back and nearly scream when he saw that it was _not _his arm. It was a long, skeletal, and completely fleshless arm. He looked back down at his feet and moved his left arm into his view. They were also completely skeletal, and he realized something else-the "bones" were incredibly thick and looked too heavy to move about with. Despite this, when he tried to lift the left leg, it felt like it always had. And he could feel something else on his back and shoulders. Something heavier.

_Oh no, no, no! Don't let it be what I think it is!_, Donovan thought in horror. He reached for his shoulder and grabbed something growing from it. As if though it couldn't get any worse, he looked down at his shoulder.

He was greeted by the sight of a huge skeletal wing.

He looked down at his other shoulder and saw the exact same thing-four long, curved bones protruding from his shoulder and back, running down to the spine in a symmetrical pattern.

"From your expression, you look terrified" Orno said softly, snapping Donovan out of it. "But you have not even seen your face. Allow me to help with that."

The hole in the wall that had been created by the flying body of the first psychotic thug turned into a mirror of sorts. Hesitantly, Donovan crept to the mirror and looked into the reflective surface. What greeted him was something far beyond even his nightmares could come up with; he doubted any sane human could imagine it.

The reflection was _not _him. It _couldn't _be. The body looked like a seven foot tall human skeleton, minus the skeletal wings and thick bones, but that was where the resemblance ended. His head looked like the skull of a relatively small dragon, with two horns curving from his temples. His teeth were long and sharp like that of a shark, but there was no tongue in his mouth. His eye sockets were empty, but he could see the reflection and everything else as clearly as he always had. His nostrils were simply holes in his skull, and yet, the scent of the garbage and human blood was strong. Stronger than it had ever been, in fact.

"No, no, no, no...this...it can't-" Donovan gasped as he backed away, holding his face in his large, skeletal hands. Despite his completely skeletal body, his face somehow twisted and shifted to form a truly horrified expression.

And his voice-it was _different _as well. Deeper, a thick baritone, but not absurdly deep and devoid of any ethnic distinctions.

"Do not appear so afraid" Orno told him. "You have sympathised with the plight of so many bizarre and deviant human beings; you should not be so terrified of what you truly are."

"_What are you?! What am __**I**__?!_" Donovan shouted at the humanoid, whose face was now a cold, emotionless slate.

"Leviathan realized that God needed a counterpart to the light; not just a fallen warden, but another god to contrast God" Orno started to explain. "And so Leviathan became god of flesh, hunger, and desire, and he created the eternal maze realm that is the Labyrinth. Always twisting and turning the gray sky, a diamond casting his order upon his land. It is my people, the Cenobites, who enforce that order. The humans, such chaotic brutes, waging war against each other and hunting for pure sport-it is not surprising that they are so easily taken into the Labyrinth, so drawn to these puzzle boxes by their most wicked desires."

"But somebody needs to give the humans the boxes; to watch over them, to protect them, to take them back. It is where I come in. It is _my _duty to look through a human male's mind, search for his equation; to create a new box, and send him to earth with my libido, to fidn the woman of his desires. And once he procreates with her, he dies-but the child lives on, even as it kills it's mother."

"No…"

"It is the Guardians who keep Leviathan and the Labyrinth strong. The puzzle boxes are their life, their blood. No greater duty can be asked of them."

"_NO! _No, this-this isn't my choice! I never asked for this-!"

"No Guardian ever has; you are not the first to make that statement. But in time, you will realize how much the box is connected to you, and how little your life is without it" Orno scoffed.

"This is a-all a dream! A nightmare! None of this possible! You can't exist! This is real reality! I-I shouldn't even exist!" Donovan yelled at him. As he edged closer towards the Cenobite, a chain flew out of thin air and wrapped itself around his ribcage before it pulled him back with ease. Orno grinned.

"You, Donovan-you are quite special. Never have I met a Guardian in such immense denial! But you will come to accept it; what other life could possibly exist for your species?" Orno then threw the puzzle box at Donovan. It hit him in the face before it fell to the ground with a clunking noise.

"You were supposed to catch it" Orno said in a monotone voice.

"God, please…" Donovan started to moan, and Orno responded by twisting the chain off his body before whipping him across the face with it.

"God matters not in this situation. Why would God want anything to do with you, a Guardian who has murdered?" Orno asked.

"_I DIDN'T MEAN TO DO IT!_"

"Ah, of course not! Just your instincts, I presume? Fret not; I shall clean up your mess soon enough. No one will suspect anything once these animals are missing. And now, I shall leave you. Do well, Donovan Randle, and distribute your success amongst your brothers and sisters of the Labyrinth."

"No, get back here! Answer my questions, you scheming rat-!"

But Orno was done with him. An orange field of what looked like electricity burst from his leather clothing and wrapped around him before it appeared to combine with his body. Then, the crackling and glowing orange outline of Orno flew out in all directions with a loud burst, and with that, he was gone.

Donovan could do nothing but fall to his knees and look at the puzzle box. Despite his empty sockets, he started crying again; none of his tears could obscure the intricately patterned puzzle box.

_This can't be real! None of this should be happening, I should be at home enjoying my birthday and talking to my family. Not-not learning that I'm not, not even…_

He couldn't bring himself to remember what he no longer was, what he had been lied about to by reality itself.

He wasn't even a human being.

The urge to bring his fist down on the box washed over him. To shatter it, to break it into millions of pieces; to take the intricate design and waste it away. Take the hard work necessary to craft such a complex otherworldly device and make it be all for nothing.

He raised his fist and he tried to bring it down on the box. He tried that four times. But every time Donovan tried to destroy it, his arm suddenly shook and he slowly pulled it back. It angered and, above all, confused him; he didn't want the thing. It didn't take long for the device to fill him with loathing. But every time he tried to bring his fist down, he just couldn't bring himself to finish what he had started.

"How much for your magazines?" a voice asked.

"Forty each."

It sounded far away. The men's voices couldn't be that close to him. But then, he remembered the sounds on that day, how things suddenly felt so much louder, so painful to hear. And Donovan could smell something odd as well; it sounded like an increasing amount of blood being mixed with some kind of wet chemical…

"You ain't gonna get anymore from me" the first voice spat. "You ask too much; be happy I got enough in my pocket."

Donovan looked back down at the puzzle box and remembered what Orno had told him about the duty of his species, which he had called "Guardians."

_But is it right?_, he asked himself. _What happens to people once they are taken to the Labyrinth?_

He seethed inside as he picked up the box and stood back up. He learned that he couldn't blink or close his hollow eye sockets, so he decided to revert to his human form. His breath stood still as he relaxed his body while trying to push out his human form at the same found it immensely difficult to release the tension within him while trying to push something out of his mind. It hurt his head an awful lot to try to force out his human form, and more than once, his face tensed up again.

Finally, the feeling of lightness came back over him for a brief amount of time before he saw that he was his regular human self again, with his original clothes and everything. The puzzle box was still in his hand.

Whistling and footsteps came closer to his location. Donovan turned and raced away from between the two houses, not wanting anyone to see him near the carnage.

"Hey, the hell's your problem kid! What's you in my way for?"

It was the exact same voice asking for magazines; from what Donovan could see, he was tightly gripping three porn magazines.

"My-my apologies, sir. I wanted to give this to you" Donovan gasped at the speed of a drunk driver. He extended his hand and displayed the box to the man.

"The hell is that?" the man grumbled, even as his gaze was fixed upon the gold object.

"It's, umm...everything you desire, sir. Everything you've ever wanted, craved, couldn't live without-this is it. Your key to eternal bliss and salvation" Donovan tried to explain. From what he thought, it was a good vague description even though he had literally created it from random words that came to his mind.

The man studied the box for a solid minute, his eyes darting over the markings and edges. He bit his lip in contemplation. Finally, he said:

"How much?"

"Oh, nothing. It's always been yours, sir."

The man seemed to hesitate before he sprinted towards Donovan. Faster than Donovan could blink, he ripped the puzzle box from his hand and then sprinted away. He never looked back.

Donovan let loose a sigh of relief and stumbled back to the scene of the massacre. The man's running footsteps still reached his ears, but at least the smell was gone.

The sight of his so-called "true" form resurfaced in his mind.

If he was a Guardian, as Orno called it...then what could he do? Obviously, with his hearing and acute sense of smell, his abilities were above that of a simple human. If he had wings, then that meant he could fly, right?

Unless they were just for show. There was only one way to find out.

He shifted back to his meditative state and forced his human form back in while taking the draconic, skeletal "Guardian" form. Donovan realized that the shifting between his two forms had become much less painful after the first time he had done it. It almost felt natural, for lack of any better words.

Donovan straightened his body and mimicked popping his back while straining his shoulders, wondering if there were any muscles in his skeletal body. His wings instantly unfurled; he looked at them and guessed that they started at maybe five feet before dipping down and continuing at three feet. The skeletal wings were quite thick for what looked like bones.

He sagged forwards again while forcing immense pressure on his shoulders from within, and his wings folded again. He straightened up again but without straining his shoulders, and his wings stayed where they were. Donovan then slouched again while forcing his shoulders back, and his wings spread out once more.

Donovan stood up straight again without moving his shoulders, so his wings stayed spread out. It wasn't for long, though; he started moving his shoulders back and forth, back and forth, all the while straining every inch of his shoulders. It was painful, having to build so much tension inside two specific parts of his body while moving them as quick as he could. However, it produced results-his wings actually started flapping, starting off slow before the pace started to pick up somewhat. He ran across the street and saw that nobody was around, which was odd since someone should have heard the near inhuman shrieks of the men that he had killed, but it was still a good thing for Donovan since no one saw his true form.

Five houses down, there was a very old, very badly rundown house with a set of steps in the back. Right above it was a balcony, but even though that meant that the house had two stories, the house was awfully small and the balcony hung low enough that a simple push from below could sent someone up to the balcony.

Now, in this form, Donovan was about seven feet tall. He wouldn't even need any help to get up to the balcony, and so he ran to the steps and jumped as high as he could. It felt odd, jumping while being seven feet, and his body now really felt a lot heavier than in his human form. How did his mass change as well?

He grabbed the edge of the balcony and hoisted himself up, tumbling onto the hard tiles. Pushing himself up, he saw that the roof was maybe two feet taller than him. Donovan walked closer to the door into the abandoned bedroom before he jumped again, feeling as if though he was using all of his energy to do so. He grabbed the edge of the roof and clawed at the shingles with his skeletal fingers, struggling to crawl onto the top of the small house. By the time he had made it, his ribs ached and the shingles were little more than splinters that made the house look pitiful even for Detroit.

Donovan found himself having to keep his balance on the curved roof. All around him, there were rundown houses and garbage filled alleyways. There was barely anything magnificent about Detroit from what he saw from that roof. But maybe, if he could really see it from above…

Straining his shoulders while pushing them back and forth, he stood at the center of the roof and took a deep breath before he ran down the roof and launched himself off…

...and promptly crashed into the side of another house.

Donovan was paralyzed by the pain; his vision went black and his head felt like it was about to explode into a bloody mess. His spine felt numb and he couldn't feel his arms and legs at all, as if though they didn't even exist.

_To think, that I would try to fly_, Donovan thought, _and instead I would cripple myself. So much for testing my abilities._

His vision had returned at least, and his explosive migraine had vanished after maybe only ten seconds. He still couldn't move, but it was still...odd.

_I just crashed into a wall from twenty feet. I should be dead right now!_, Donovan thought.

The feeling had returned to his limbs, and the numbness had left his spine after only forty seconds. Another minute passed, and he was able to raise his knees and lift himself up.

_That-that can't-it's not possible! Nobody can recover from paralysis, and not in less than two minutes! That crash should have killed me, I shouldn't have survived it! How can I still be standing?!_

Donovan looked around him and remembered the six lunatics he had murdered. Running back to the gory scene, he grabbed the dropped knife and stabbed his right hand. Well, _tried _to at least. The blade simply hit his thick, skeletal hand. He was still able to feel the impact, but his hand was not affected at all and no pain registered. He tried ten more times, to no avail. Donovan then decided to bash his head onto the asphalt street, wanting to see if the result of his landing was not a one-time event. For almost five minutes, he slammed his head onto the street. It was only after the fourth minute that his head actually started to hurt. The pain left after five seconds.

_It doesn't matter what happens-I can heal faster than I should_, Donovan realized.

He ran back to the house, hoisted himself onto the balcony, climbed onto the roof, and flapped his wings. This time, he flexed his shoulders for almost ten minutes, increasing the speed of his flapping wings to a blazing crescendoe.

He leaped, and crashed into the ground again. For a second time, he was paralyzed for one minute before he pushed himself back up and ran back to the house.

For two hours, he ran back and forth between the house and the ground, constantly building the speed of his flapping wings and constantly slamming into the ground and briefly paralyzing himself. Donovan's shoulders were on the breaking point, feeling ready to explode at any moment. The rest of his body was starting to feel exhausted and his lungs-wherever they were in this skeletal draconic body-were running short of breath.

_One more time, and if I can't do it then, I'll just walk_, Donovan thought between panting breaths.

He climbed back onto the roof, as he had done _ad nauseam. _As he struggled to keep his balance, he strained and grinded his shoulders and built the strength into his wings. After twenty minutes of stopping himself from slipping off the roof and flapping his wings, he started to run down before he launched himself off and towards the ground...and he took flight.

For a moment, Donovan didn't know what to feel as he rose higher and higher into the air. Here he was, a creature that shouldn't even exist, leaping off the roof of a rundown Detroit home, and soaring into the sky with his own wings. Actual wings.

He couldn't stop himself from crying and laughing at the same time. He didn't know where the tears came from in this form, but he didn't care.

"I...can fly" Donovan laughed. "I, I don't need the wings of some machine. I...can actually fly! I can _**fly!**_"

The sky came closer and closer. Dusk crept over Detroit, and the hazy purple and orange sky greeted him; it almost looked like a giant mural up close. It was unreal. He flew through several clouds, the breaking of the air greeting him with a booming _whoosh _and covering him in water. Donovan pushed himself even higher so nobody could clearly see him, until he was at what he guessed to be over four thousand feet in the air.

Below, he saw the entirety of Detroit from a bird's eye view, including the downtown. The Broderick Tower, the Detroit Opera House, the Kales Building-he no longer cared what everyone else thought of Detroit or what they called it. They had never seen it during flight, from thousands of feet above. That rundown house was only one story of Detroit. It didn't tell of the beauty he saw from above.

Dusk turned to night and the mural-esque haze was replaced by the stars and the black sky. The lights of downtown came to life, building on the beauty Donovan saw below. He couldn't hear or smell anything from the altitude he was at, but perhaps that was for the better, as he could gaze upon the nighttime of Detroit without interruption and admire it for what had persevered through the harshest of times, from the crack-cocaine epidemic to the city's bankruptcy.

As he weaved through the sky, he flew alongside the birds who also roamed the air and saw an airplane tear by. It was too far in front of him to notice him and he knew better than to fly alongside the craft, but the air displaced by the plane still washed over him and rattled his body.

Occasionally, he would land on the roof of a tall building and crouch so no one could see him. There, he would take in the sounds and scents of Detroit with his enhanced senses, and the smell of the neglected garbage cans and the honking of cars and wailing of police sirens wouldn't fail to instill a headache and make him nauseous. Oddly enough, he didn't hear anyone talking about criminal activities despite everything the media had told him about the city.

When he decided to leave, he would build up the strength of his flapping wings over a twenty minute period before he took off again, always making sure that nobody saw him.

Donovan flew for more than four hours, observing the city from above and feeling the gusts of the wind around him. High in the atmosphere, time slowed down, and it felt like half a day had passed. Despite the remaining stars and black sky, Donovan was still surprised by the fact that it was still Thursday. When he landed, it was only 11:26 PM.

An apartment block was across from the building he had landed on. Through one of the he fourth story windows, he was able to make out a man who seemed to be sitting on the floor. It looked like he was slowly moving something around in his hands…

_My God!_, Donovan realized, _It's him! And that's the box!_

It was the man he had given the puzzle box shortly after learning that he was a Guardian. He looked like he was bare chested, and from what Donovan could make out of his face, he had the most determined expression he had ever seen.

The sound of a bell tolling snapped both the man and Donovan out of their stupors. Shortly after hearing it, the man looked back down at the puzzle box and continued tinkering with it as if though nothing had happened. Donovan, though, looked all around him in an attempt to find the source of the tolling. His expression turned from shock to confusion to worry within seconds.

_There's no church anywhere near this place, and no church would have service at this time! Why is that man just fiddling with the box if he heard it as well? How does nobody else hear the bell?!_

He looked back at the man; he was still fixated on the box. Donovan knew that something was horribly wrong here, but he could nothing but watch as the box suddenly lit up with a flash of electrical blue light, similar to when Orno had vanished. The man dropped the box and gasped, which Donova was able to hear. He flung himself backwards and gazed at the box before the world suddenly transformed into something different.

Something not even Donovan's worst nightmare had thought of.

The landscape became a massive darkness. The sound of the tolling bell returned, only now, it was a much deeper, slower, and undeniably malevolent sound; it was almost like a mockery of the religious significance of the tolling bell. Multiple pillars slowly spun around him and the man, pillars covered in bloody spikes, adorned with ruptured skulls and hanging entrails. The scent of human blood and decaying bodies reached his nose and nearly knocked him off his feet with how powerful it was. The sound of slithering chains grated his ears and forced him to cover them with his hands, and even then, it didn't do much to block out the sinister noise.

He felt something under his feet. He looked down.

What greeted Donovan was a whole lake of blood forming beneath him; it was already covering his feet. He screamed and fell, covering himself in the blood. The man, though, apparently didn't notice him at all, as he simply looked around in terror.

"Sir! I'm over here!" Donovan shouted to him, but even when he looked right at him, it was as if though Donovan was invisible. The lake of blood had also not appeared under the man, whereas for Donovan, it had reached his knees. He was slowed down by it as he tried to make his way to the man.

He wasn't even able to make it ten feet when a series of chains shot out and tore into the man. One pair dug into his shoulders and lifted him into the air; another pair ripped open his chest and exposed his ribcage; one more shredded his groin open.

The man was miraculously still alive and clearly shrieking out of unimaginable pain. Even though Donovan couldn't hear any of it, he couldn't bring himself to watch what was going on. The last thing he saw was another leather-clad Cenobite step out of the shadows; this one's eyes were hidden by metal caps and it's skull was exposed, a tan brown standing out amongst the pale skin.

When Donovan looked back up, the lake of blood was gone, as was all of the blood that had been on him. He was back on top of the building, and the apartment was there. The man was gone, but there were no blood stains in his apartment. The box was just lying there on the floor.

His loathing of the box returned, and now, it increased by a hundredfold. Orno had never told him this. He had never told him that the box would do _this _to people! The box killed innocent people! It was inhumane as well, tearing apart flesh and shredding people into pieces. And what for? Because they had given into their most basic, natural desires? Because they couldn't help themselves?

As he stared at the box, ready to tear it apart, it suddenly shot into the air. It shook in the air before it flew through the window and straight at him.

Donovan flinched when the box hit him in the chest. How did it just come to him like that? He didn't want it! He hated it! Words couldn't describe his loathing for the bloodthirsty device.

Again, he tried to punch it, stomp on it, crush it. Do _something _to it to express his rage. But every time he tried to strike the box, he stopped and pulled back.

"Why can't I do it?! I hate you! Why won't you let me kill you?! Everything you've done to me so far-what you've done to an innocent person! Why won't you let me kill you?! You murdered another man, why can't I do the same to you?! You're a coward! _Let me kill you!_" Donovan screamed at the box, holding it at eye level and clutching it with the intent to shatter it. But he couldn't. It wouldn't let him.

He slammed the box onto the roof and just stared at it. He was done crying; this thing had truly brought him past his breaking point. This one box had-

It shot into the air again, flying well above his head. Donovan spun to look at it, and the moment he did, it fell to the roof again.

"Wait…"

He looked at the box and thought the words, _Move up. _The box didn't; it remained perfectly still. He mentally commanded it to moved right, left, up, to crash down through the roof. It stood still.

"Come on, MOVE!" Donovan yelled at the box.

_God, I'm talking to a puzzle box!_, he realized. Casting aside the mental command attempt, he tried to move the box in various directions by moving his head in those same directions.

Nothing.

"Come on, I had to be doing something right…" Donovan muttered, his gaze never leaving the box. He was sure that if he was in his human form, his face would be blood red from how much he was straining it. His fists were shaking from just how tight they were and he could hear his teeth grinding against each other.

He was thinking of lifting the box, but it was just a thought rather than an explicit command. Donovan didn't think it would do anything anyways. After all, if even combing the mental commands with the bodily movements did nothing, why would this?

And yet, with the thought of the movement and the strain, the box started jumping up and down. Shocked out of his concentration, the box stopped.

_I did it! It moved again! I need to focus, focus, don't be caught off guard…_

Once again, he focused on the box with such intent that it hurt his face; all the while, he was thinking of lifting the box, picturing the action in his head. It slowly shook and bounced somewhat before it actually sprang up a good two feet. He thought of lifting it higher and higher, at least forty feet, redoubling his focus on moving the box without touching it. It shot up five more feet, then ten more feet, before it finally started rising at a slow and steady pace, climbing higher and higher with growing ease. By the time Donovan held it as still as he could, the box was over sixty feet above him.

But he had no intention of leaving it there.

With redoubled effort, he sent the box flying straight away at a blazing speed, casting it away into the murky depths of downtown Detroit. Donovan had seen what the box had done once, and once was enough. It was a cruel, seductive weapon that fed the so-called "Labyrinth"'s war machine, murdering people with reckless abandon. And it was a chain, forcing his species-the one he had just found out he was part of-to find powerless people and have them ripped apart. The box gave nothing to the Guardians in return, as he had just found out.

"And I hope nobody is desperate enough to want you" Donovan told the puzzle box as he saw it fly away. The device that had ended up being the ruin of the life had had once known was gone from the one he had now been forced into; that was what he wanted. The thing was evil, and his curiosity concerning it had turned into utter contempt.

But what could he do now?

Coming back home to his grandfather and grandmother was not an option. He had stormed out of the house, furious at them for never having told him that his father was a serial rapist. They had probably already contacted the police and told them that he was missing. Even if he did go back, they would most likely think he was crazy if he told them about being a Guardian and everything about Leviathan and Orno and the Labyrinth. Then, there was the chance that Orno would find out about the forsaking of his "duty" and decide to pay his family another visit, only this one would not be so passive.

Had any other Guardians ever forsaken their duty? What about the Cenobites? If so, then what happened to them? Where were they?

_Maybe...Orno was right. Guarding this box is my job, and without it, I'm nothing. I have to do this, it's the only-_

Why was he doubting himself? He hated that box! It had proven itself to be a malicious object. But what else was he to do now? His old life was gone.

"_...Slender Man…_"

"_...the vigilante that has called itself "The Pocket"..._"

Donovan had heard about these two vigilantes, Slender Man in Los Angeles and The Pocket in Chicago. At first, he had been giddy as he read the headlines, shocked and enthusiastic when he learned that superheroes were real. No longer were Superman and Spider Man restricted to the comic book pages; now, the books he had read as a little boy were the world he lived in.

But these superheroes were really little more than vigilantes. The rise of superheroes had started with an incredibly gory bang, and if this was going to be a trend, then it was a dangerous start. The way Donovan saw it, superheroes should not be murderers. They were supposed to be peacekeepers, crime fighters…

...and guardians.

_To think, that these powers are used to safeguard a destructive and poisonous device from another realm_, Donovan mused in his head, _when they could be used for something beneficial! Something that can save people, lift them up. Not to murder them and tell them that they're worthless, but to tell people that it's going to be better._

He looked at the city of Detroit around and below him. Many of the thing that people said about Detroit were, unfortunately, true. The rundown houses, the open dealing of illegal property, the sheer violence perpetrated by the criminals. He had had seen and experienced it all in a day.

But that would change. He had the power; if no one else was willing to stand up for Detroit, then he would be the one.

Donovan built up the strength in his wings, spending ten minutes pushing his shoulders back and forth at a faster speed than before. If there were people out there that needed help, then he could no longer afford to waste twenty minutes flapping his wings. After what seemed to him like ten minutes, he dived off the roof and took to the air just as he was about to hit the ground. Gaining altitude, he put his senses of hearing and smell on alert for screaming and the scent of adrenaline, blood, and the air produced by increased breathing.

It wasn't long until he heard the sound of a struggle. A woman was shrieking so much it sounded like a saw blade, and the CO2 from her breathing pressed against his nostrils. Flying down, he was able to see a man wielding a broken bottle on top of a woman. His left hand was clutching her throat, but it wasn't strong enough to cut off her air supply, judging by her screaming and the constant smell of the air.

As Donovan stopped the flapping of his wings and started falling, he focused on the street and thought of moving it in all directions.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

The bar was a complete joke. Either the owner was the atmospheric type, or he was too lazy to pay for an electric bill in Detroit. The drinks were all a soggy and thick swill, tasting like a piss and diarrhea cocktail. The music had been nothing but a gloomy ambient, and that had had an effect on the men. They were all either depressed antisocials staring into the abysses that were their drinks or scowling assholes muttering about their "lazy-ass bitches" at home and such psychotic nonsense; it wasn't said to anyone in particular, of course.

Rachel Warner pulled the jacket over her shoulders, her teeth clattering as the wind blew. Even early in the morning of March 13, the weather of Detroit was just as cruel as the rest of the city. She knew that she needed to get out more, but this bar had been the wrong choice. None of her friends had decided to come with her, and she didn't dare to talk to any of the creeps lounging in there. The televisions sets on the wall were of poor and outdated quality and they were all showing highlight reels on ESPN.

A gray Subaru parked on the curb. She didn't pay much attention to it.

_Dumbass. I'm sure you have enough money to pay for a towed car_, Rachel mocked in her head. The Subaru stopped and a particularly angry looking man stomped out. He was already quite tall, and he would be even taller if he didn't bend his back so much. His neck was crooked and his face seemed to crane out as he stared at her. A scar ran from the top of his nose down to his right cheek. His hands were deep in his coat pockets.

And he was walking straight towards her. He pulled a beer bottle out of his right coat pocket.

"I'm sorry sir, can I help you?" she practically spat at him. This guy was a freak; it wasn't that hard for her to see. She just wanted to go home and get out of that shithole of a bar, and now this moron was just stomping over to her as if though she knew him-

Her thoughts stopped when he kicked her in the shin. Rachel went down with a heavy _thud_ and gasped in pain, clutching her shin. Now, she was pissed.

"What the fuck's your problem, you piece of shit?! Who the fuck do you think you are, I just want to go ho-!"

She heard glass break.

Rage turned into terror when she saw the man stand over her with a shattered bottle. His whole body shuddered when he breathed and his face...God, his _face_…

The man fell to his knees and grabbed her throat while raising the bottle high over his head. Rachel was still in front of the bar, and so she did the logical thing-she started screaming at the top of her throat. While doing so, she grabbed the man's coat and moved her upper body, hoping to push him off.

But nobody came, and the man didn't show any signs of giving in. The jagged blades of the shattered bottle drew closer and closer to her eye; all the while, the man's breathing continued pressing against her ears and he remained silent, his face being the only indication of any human emotion.

The man's grip tightened, and Rachel's screaming died down as he now sought to destroy her windpipe. Why wasn't anyone helping? Did anybody even hear her? Why was this man still sitting here, ready to kill her with ease? What did she even do to piss him off? These were the thoughts running through her head right before the whole street shook.

It was like an earthquake had come out of nowhere. The ground below Rachel cracked loudly and she saw particles of rock and asphalt fly up around her and the man. He stopped and let go of her throat before he looked to the side. His eyes bulged and his breathing increased by tenfold; the man jumped up and slowly pulled the bottle back.

_What the hell's wrong?_, she thought as she saw the man's arm shaking. She looked in the direction of the man's sight and her heart skipped a beat and her breathing stopped.

The _thing _was maybe seven feet tall, a head attached to a long neck. But it wasn't a human head at all; rather, it was the eyeless and horned skull of what looked like a dragon. The rest of the beast's body was completely naked and skeletal, albeit thicker than she thought bones were. Extending from it's shoulders were skeletal wings, four bones forming a lengthy pair.

The man cast his bottle at the monster. It stopped just as it was about to strike it's face and hung in the air, shaking uncontrollably. Then, as if though the situation couldn't get any stranger, the bottle flung itself at one of the Subaru's windows; the window and bottle both exploded in a shower of glass.

Rachel looked back at the man. His mouth hung open and he couldn't stop blinking. She could see the sweat building on him, his hands forming fists before he spun around and tried to run away from the creature as fast as he could.

_Tried._

The man suddenly stopped dead for maybe five seconds before he just flew back, zipping straight towards the creature. He let loose a brief cry of terror before his face was greeted by the monster's fist. He was sent flying again for a short time, hitting the street and crumpling in an unconscious heap.

Rachel started sobbing. That lunatic was now down and out, she was safe-but the nightmare wasn't over yet. That dragon-like beast, the monster, was still there. She saw what that thing was able to do-control objects without touching them, send grown men flying with a single punch, hell, it could even fly! She had no chance against this creature. She knew that she had to run; run to somewhere far away, far from that thing. She could feel that that it was utterly _wrong. _It didn't belong here, it wasn't right. But she couldn't get up; she could do nothing but breathe faster and clutch the ground as the thing walked towards her.

"No, please, please I don't wanna d-!"

"Are you okay?" it asked her in a deep voice. It wasn't demonic or otherworldly; it was a normal baritone. Oddly enough, there was a soothing undertone to it.

"Wh-what, wa-wait-"

It kneeled down and grabbed her by her shoulders before it slowly helped her up. When she let go, though, she nearly fell on her face, and her fall was only stopped by the creature.

"How do you feel?" it asked.

"My shin...I don't think I can stand" she told it weakly. It gently placed it's hand on her shin, but even the softest touch made her cry out in pain.

"I'm sorry" the thing said as it almost instantly removed it's hand. "Is your car anywhere nearby?"

"That...that green one across the street."

It nodded slowly before it told her, "Alright. I'll take you to your car, and you get inside and wait. Call 911, tell them to bring the police and an ambulance."

"W-what about _him?_" Rachel asked, pointing to the man with disgust.

"Well, that's why the police will come" it answered as it helped her to her car. "He's most likely going to prison for a very long time for what he tried to do here."

Rachel took out her keys and opened the car door. As the beast helped her get into the driver's seat, she looked up at it's skeletal face.

"Who are you?"

Now it was the creature's turn to look confused. "I'm sorry?" it asked.

"If you decided to waste your time savin' me, the least you could tell me is who you are."

It tilted it's head to the side several times, seemingly thinking it over for a good minute. Then, with no hint of sarcasm or malice, it smiled at her.

"I...am Guardian."

And with that, it carefully shut the door and walked away.

(_**NEXT ISSUE: **_Leviathan, the god and creator of the Labyrinth and the Cenobites, is not pleased when he learns of Donovan's defiance. Pointing out Orno's position as the creator of the Guardians, the Cenobite is tasked with bringing Donovan back to his desired path. But what about when push comes to shove? No other type of creature has ever bested a Cenobite. All this in _Guardian #3: Opportunity Knocks Down the Door._)


	4. Opportunity Knocks Down the Door

_Guardian #3: Opportunity Knocks Down the Door_

He was of flesh, desire, and hunger. And yet, he was also of order, the trait he admired the absolute most. To him, God's species of humanity was a grotesque collection of mindless and utterly chaotic primitives. He did not dare to compare them to even ants, for ants at least had order and one unifying purpose for all members of their species. They focused only on the carnal pleasures rather than the specific categorisations of all the forms of desire.

But eventually, all of those humans who seeked glorification would come to his realm.

Constantly shifting and turning in the endless gray sky of the Labyrinth, the diamond-shaped god Leviathan constantly looked over his realm and all of his beings. Once an angel, he had left his post to form his own Heaven to become the the opposite of God. Where God espoused an unbelievably strict doctrine of the restraint of basic human pleasure, Leviathan embraced all forms of arousal, whether it be want or need. While God's creatures were chaotic and unpredictable beasts with little rhyme or reason to their behaviors, all of Leviathan's creatures were tasked with a specific duty corresponding to each species. The Cenobites gathered the humans who had solved the puzzle boxes and studied them, the Engineers created Cenobites from worthy humans devoted to their specific deviance, the Minotaurs searched for any humans attempting to escape and returned them to their cells, and the Guardians gave the puzzle boxes to new humans and retrieved them when the humans had been whisked away.

But one didn't.

The Guardian named Donovan Randle, the sixteen year old boy who had recently learned that he was not actually human, had been cut off from him. Leviathan had felt the man solving the puzzle box destined for Donovan and his arrival in the Labyrinth, but after that, the boy was gone. He had been cut off from his puzzle box, and he was expecting the worst.

The boy had forsaken his duty.

"Eternal Lord of the Flesh and Order, Your Highest Holiness, Leviathan" the Cenobite formally greeted Leviathan while kneeling and bowing his head, his eyes shut. This Cenobite was pale and clothed in incredibly skintight black leather like all other Cenobites, but it's face was stretched out by a metal ring with three arrows pointing to the top of his head.

He was Orno, the Cenobite in charge of creating new puzzle boxes by searching through the mind of a human male to find their "equation." It was Orno who inserted his seed into the men and sent them to Earth to impregnate a human woman, who would die giving birth to a Guardian, the skeletal, draconic protectors of the puzzle boxes.

Orno could wait sixteen years to tell them what they really were and to give them their box.

"_**RISE ORNO**_" Leviathan commanded him in his language of clicks and snaps. Upon hearing those words, Orno instantly rose and lifted his head to look at his diamond god.

"What do you need of me, my god?" he asked Leviathan. The god answered with a particularly long and complex snap reminiscent of a growl. The ground shook.

"_**THE BOY IN THE CITY KNOWN AS DETROIT.**_"

"The one named Donovan Randle?" Orno asked. If he had any hair, he would certainly raise an eyebrow at the mention of the most recent Guardian.

"_**YES**_" Leviathan answered in his equivalent of a hiss. "_**THERE IS A DISTURBANCE WITH HIM.**_"

"What do you mean?"

Around Orno, the Labyrinth shifted, becoming a tangled mess representing Leviathan's frustration. The black beams emanating from him and moving over the land grew ever more erratic.

"_**I DO NOT FEEL HIM CONNECTED TO HIS BOX ANYMORE. HE HAS BEEN CUT OFF FROM IT. I FEAR THAT HE HAS FORSAKEN HIS DUTY AS A GUARDIAN.**_"

"_What?!_" Orno gasped. "But, but-he could not have! He can't! No Guardian-no creature of yours-has ever even considered veering from their-!"

"_**YOU SEEM TO FORGET ABOUT CHAINSAW**_" Leviathan reminded him. "_**EVEN IF SHE DID NOT COMMIT HER ACTIONS, THERE IS NO REASON TO EXPECT THAT SOMETHING LIKE THIS WOULD NOT HAPPEN EVENTUALLY. THERE IS NO USE IN BECOMING SO SHOCKED, ORNO.**_"

"If this is truly the scenario, then what do you propose I do?" Orno asked him.

"_**GO BACK TO THE CITY OF DETROIT, FIND HIS BOX, AND BRING HIM BACK TO US.**_"

"And if the boy refuses to listen to my words?"

At that, Leviathan seemed to laugh, as if though he had been waiting for that question.

"_**THEN I GIVE YOU FULL AUTHORIZATION TO USE FORCE IF NEED BE.**_"

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Donovan Randle opened his eyes and rose from his sleep. He had fallen asleep maybe after two o'clock AM, but he had been shocked out of it when a car alarm from four blocks away had reached his now incredibly sensitive ears. As it turned out, he had only been asleep for four hours. He had tried to go back to sleep, but it took over him over an hour to doze off again.

He slowly unzipped the sleeping bag he had snatched from a shopping cart behind a Goodwill that contained goods that had recently been donated. Popping his back, he looked at the street from the rooftop that he had slept on. As he did so, he imagined his current body fading away and being replaced by his emerging "true form"-a seven foot tall, naked, skeletal creature with the head of a dragon's skull.

There was that feeling of lightness again, the disorientation as his legs and armed faded and were replaced by their skeletal equivalents, thicker than any normal human bones. A weight hanging now hung from his shoulders and the back of his upper ribs, four bones, each pair forming a skeletal wing.

Donovan walked over to the rooftop exit and stared at his reflection, his head now a skull from whose temples two horns grew. His sockets were empty and he couldn't close them, but his expression could still change despite being of bone. Teeth were now fangs, the two upper frontmost being the sharpest.

It had been fifteen hours since he had learned that his father had been a serial rapist, and fourteen hours when the pale and black leathered creature named "Orno" had told him that he was a "Guardian", beings who were entrusted with the care of a puzzle box on their sixteenth birthdays. Orno had told him nothing of the puzzle box save for the fact that it led to a realm known as the Labyrinth which had been created by some deity named "Leviathan."

It had been nine hours since he had seen what those puzzle boxes actually _did._

Once solved, the first-and last-man he had given it to had been dragged off to a dark and horrible land where he had most likely been ripped apart. Donovan thanked God he didn't have to see that; seeing the dark place he had been taken to when viewing the man had been nightmarish enough.

It had been almost seven hours since his first save.

Donovan's first time using his inhuman powers had been a disaster, resulting in the deaths of six men who had tried to kill him. As his powers had awakened, he had fallen into a drunken rage; it wasn't really murdering so much as it was slaughtering, as those six men could do nothing to protect themselves from his mindless wrath. But once had had seen the true evil of the puzzle box, he knew what he needed to do when he heard and saw that man trying to murder the utterly defenceless woman.

Gathering up his sleeping bag, Donovan walked over to the edge of the roof and strained his shoulders while moving them back. He did this as he gripped his bag. It was a good exercise to build the strength in his wings and help him reach flight quicker; that's how he saw it.

It took him ten minutes to build up enough strength to dive down and then fly just as he was about to hit the ground. He decided to fly closer to the city of Detroit so he could have a chance of hearing anything suspicious.

The news was talking about him and his rescue of that woman named Rachel Warner at 1:54 PM. He saw no need to smile; it was enough for him to feel proud of what he did inside. Besides, everything else the news told him was enough to warrant worry.

In the city of Chicago, protests were beginning to build as the likes of Al Sharpton took the deaths of several gangsters at the hands of apparently innocent citizens and ran with them. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, a gang leader had been found decapitated and another bombing had occurred. The death of the gang leader-named Fernando Saldivar-could have been at the hands of none other than the faceless and eight foot tall vigilante dubbed "Slender Man."

_And now they see what happens when us superheroes use lethal force_, Donovan thought. _If they were there when I killed those men, they would know better than to continue murdering so freely!_

Below, he could hear two men shouting and two women screaming. Donovan landed on a sidewalk and ran to an intersection, where three people dropped everything they were doing and stared at him.

He dropped his bag in front of a store and assessed what he had heard. Two men had walked across and then suddenly spotted each other. They had pulled out their guns and one of them had taken a husband hostage, intending to use him as a human shield. The man holding him was threatening that if the other tried to take a shot, he would just use the husband as cover and shoot him non-fatally, sending the man to prison for the murder of an innocent and making him snitch.

_That's a needlessly convoluted plan_, Donovan snorted in his head as he turned the corner and ran to the man screaming and aiming at the hostage holder. It felt odd running while being of nothing but thick bone and standing at seven feet. With that height, the hostage holder was able to easily see him; his eyes instantly bulged and his arm lowered.

Donovan's arm grabbed the man and immediately spun him around before punching his jaw, knocking him out before he could even react. Turning back to the hostage holder, the man had let go of the husband, who had rushed back to his family, weeping with them. The man's body was shaking and his jaw had dropped in fear of him.

"Put your gun down and get on the ground" Donovan firmly told the man. That seemed to get on his nerves.

"Who the fuck you think you are?! Ugly-ass motherfucker, you think you some goddamn cop or some shit? Who you think you are tellin' me to put my gun down and get down?! What you gonna do, I don't see no handcuffs-"

"Then I will take that gun from you" he interrupted. The man looked confused and ready to say something again, when the gun in his hand started shaking. The man's eyes bulged again as Donovan focused on the gun and imagined it flying out of the man's hand and coming it to him. After a few seconds, that's what it did.

The man turned and tried to run, but he didn't get very far. His body stopped and he started screaming angry gibberish before he flew back towards Donovan, whose fist connected with the man's forehead. The man hit the ground and groaned, grabbing his head and trying to sit up.

"Why did you try to kill these people and this man?" he asked him after he stared down at the man.

"What the fuck you talkin' about, I didn't try to kill those-"

"Yes you did! You were willing to let that innocent man die so you could gain an upper hand on the other gunman! Don't try to lie to me when you know what I can do. Give me the truth!"

"Okay, don't yell at me! I was mindin' my own business when this nigga walks by and I go, "Oh shit! He one of those Sex Money bitches!" You think I ain't gonna nail this piece of Sex shit? Those bitches, they were my bait" the man explained as clearly as he could.

"You should know better than to let your violent impulses control you" Donovan remarked.

"Dumbass bitch, who you think you are?!" the man hissed at him. The blow to his head prevented him from screaming so viciously again.

"I'm Guardian" Donovan told him, using the superhero alias he had adopted from his real species. With that, he slammed his fist into the man's forehead and knocked him out cold. The Guardian turned back to get his sleeping bag and was greeted by people with their phones raised and pointing directly at him, a whole crowd having been called over to see the supposedly terrifying creature.

"Wait!" someone behind him cried. He turned to see the husband still huddling with his wife and daughter. "You're that one we saw on the news, this morning. Your-your name is "Guardian", right?"

"Yes" Donovan said.

"Yeah, he just said that" one of the crowd members shouted. He immediately spun around to face her.

"You shut your mouth and leave him alone! Leave _all _of them alone! How would you like it if somebody decided to mock you after what they just went through? You have a lot of nerve to treat a man who was almost murdered like crap! What are you, twelve?"

"What the hell are you gonna do?" the woman laughed. Right after she said that, her phone started shaking just like the gun. The woman just stared at it oddly and muttered several expletives before it flew from her hands and into Donovan's hands. He crushed it into four pieces.

"Hey! That was my-" the woman screamed before being cut off by Donovan.

"Apologize to them. Now. Your phone should be the last thing you should be worrying about. Your phone can be replaced, human lives cannot."

And with that, he made his way past the woman and was about to go back to his sleeping bag when he he heard the husband whisper, "Thank you." Any human wouldn't be able to hear it, but as a Guardian, he was able to pick it up.

He looked back at the man and his family and nodded before reaching the storefront and picking up his bag; police sirens could be heard from several blocks away. Not much time until they surrounded the area. Weaving his way through a myriad of back alleys, streets, and corners, it took him over an hour to find a ladder attached to a building. He bit down on his sleeping bag and gripped the ladder before he climbed up as fast he could; he still couldn't shake the awkwardness of his true form. Once he made it to the roof, he placed the bag back under his arm and started flapping his wings as he made his way to the edge.

_Need to take less time to take flight_, he thought. _Can't take ten minutes forever-who knows what could happen in the meantime?_

And so he flexed his shoulders and back at an even faster pace, searing his bones with how much he constantly strained them. Eight minutes was how long it took him. A minute improvement.

Donovan knew the way to where he was going. 18201 Clinton River Rd. Resurrection Cemetery. He had been there every Christmas Eve for their Christmas Remembrance memorials.

On several televisions and phones, he heard the news about another bombing in Los Angeles. The attacks didn't seem to be affiliated with any known terrorist organization like ISIS, and their bombings always scattered photos of an evilly grinning Siberian husky. Really, ever since that "Slender Man" had arrived, Los Angeles had been plagued with more violence than it ever had in recent memory.

_Maybe that'll teach them. When you use brutality, it encourages brutality_, he mused. Resurrection Cemetery came further into view as he flew closer to the ground; he did so after what he thought were tombstones could be seen.

Plot four, row seventeen.

He landed before a grave marked "Amy Klein" and went from there. Many of those buried were incredibly young and male; one boy had died at the age of ten. Boys around his age who had been victims of more than just drive-by shootings and gang fights, but of Detroit's decline. That was what he fought for; not some religious redemption, but for the redemption of a once-magnificent city.

The grave he had been looking for was here. He dropped his sleeping bag and knelt on his right knee.

"Amber Randle. May 24 1962-March 12 1999."

What the grave marker didn't say was that his mother had died because of him. Mothers died when giving birth to Guardians. At least, that was what Orno had told him. His mother's death certainly backed that claim.

Doing the sign of the cross, Donovan reached out and touched his mother's name. Carved marble greeted the tips of his bony fingers. They ran down to the dates, and in his head, he began a prayer:

_How many people have died because of me, God? Those six men, the man who solved the puzzle box...my own mother. I don't want anyone to die, but...they do. Is this my fate? To be one of those brooding, depressed superheroes who does everything in his power and still fails? Because then what will be the point? How can I help people-_

"Help people!" an all-too-familiar congested voice sneered. "A philosopher, you are not. I have heard better prayers composed."

Donovan stood and turned to face the black clothed, pale, and mutilated Cenobite named Orno. The man who had revealed his origin and true nature stood with his leather cape blowing in the wind. In his right hand was the puzzle box.

"You...get that thing out of my sight _now…_" Donovan growled. His finger was raised and pointing at the box; he didn't even really focus on the Cenobite much, despite everything he had done up to this point.

"We Cenobites can peer into minds, Donovan" Orno told him. "Did you honestly think that you could simply forsake your duty-your destiny-as a Guardian? That you were meant to stop crime? You are helping people, Donovan-helping them realize the highest order of pleasure-"

"Don't try that with me!" Donovan cried. "You knew what that weapon could do! You knew it could murder people for the sake of it! And you never bothered to tell me?!"

"This is not a weapon, Donovan. Oh no, it is of far greater caliber than that. This puzzle box-_your _puzzle box-is an instrument of order and desire. It answers the call of those who seek pleasure beyond this meager realm, and it takes them to us. For study, for understanding. Do you see now? Being a so-called "superhero" is a waste of your species' true being, Donovan. By bringing the humans of craving to Leviathan, you bring order to this world, and you save more lives than you ever could as a "superhero."

"That's a load of...you know!" Donovan screamed at him. "If you and your sadist god really believe that this world is made safer by tearing people apart and experimenting on them as if though they were mice, then you're even worse than that Slender Man! That guy at least actually saves people's lives. Tell me, who's directly benefited by you imprisoning and torturing people for science?"

Orno gritted his teeth. "Listen to me, boy, and listen very carefully. If you believe Leviathan is a sadist, then you should take a look at the god you have been praying to. The one who has never been with you in any such way! His chaotic beliefs are poisoning you right now as we speak. Do not think that Leviathan did not feel you cast away this puzzle box, do not think that he felt no pain as he lost his connection to one of his people! Now come, Donovan; come take what is rightfully yours. Give up this poisonous philosophy of false heroism and come back to your true destiny. Come take your seat amongst the people of the Labyrinth."

But Donovan had made up his mind. He slowly raised his hand and moved towards the box, fooling Orno into believing that he had convinced the young Guardian. The Cenobite even grinned heartily as he saw him lay his hand over the box. What he didn't know was that Donovan was thinking of moving the box straight into the air and then far away. All the while, he focused heavily.

"Hurry this up! Much potential time is being wasted!" Orno hissed.

And with that, the box shot up. It soared to at least thirty feet. Now looking bewildered, Orno paused to glare at the box before it soared to the south, hitting the ground and kicking up dirt. It bounced a bit before stopping.

"Yes, I have learned my powers" Donovan smirked at the still-confused Cenobite.

"_Have you?_" Orno growled through tightly clenched teeth before he vanished. Now it was Donovan's turn to look confused. He looked all around him and saw nothing by tombstones...until two punches struck his back and sent him flying through a statue of a kneeling angel.

"You...you would destroy a holy object like…?" he gasped as he looked around at the broken steel.

"So you care for statues as well? And yet you do not seem to value your life, because do you know what you have just done? You have made me resort to force."

Donovan attempted to charge at Orno, but the Cenobite simply laughed and vanished again. He didn't even get a chance to look around this time as a fist slammed into his face and nearly snapped his neck with the force.

"Last chance" Orno said. "Take back your duty, or suffer in the Labyrinth."

"How about choice number three?" Donovan retorted before coughing up red blood. "I beat you to a pulp!"

Orno grinned maliciously. "There is a terribly slim chance of that happening."

With that, a cloud of arrowheaded chains suddenly appeared from thin air before Donovan, coming from all directions save for below. He knew that they possessed supernatural properties, and he could easily die if he were to just sit there and let them sink in. And he wasn't going to let that happen. Orno would have to try a lot harder than that to put him down like a dog.

He stood and charged through the front wall of chains even as they all shot at him. With his previous wounds having healed, it was less painful to feel the metallic arrowheads than it should have been. But that didn't mean that it was painless. He screamed and fell to his knees as he thought of ripping the chains out of his side with his telekinesis, even though he couldn't completely see them. He imagined seeing his reflection, only with many black arrowhead chains in his right side. The image of many chains in his side came as best as it could. The other chains turned and slithered ever closer.

"Does it hurt, Donovan? I hope it does. I hope you realize the price you have to pay for thinking you could es-"

The chains fell out of him. It still hurt greatly and the deep wounds had obviously not healed yet, but he had gotten them free. The wall of chains was closer now, and as they came, Donovan thought of Orno suddenly being drawn to him. He turned to the Cenobite; the chains were not the priority now.

And yet, they came closer and closer, now not even ten inches away from him. Now was the moment. With a cry, he charged at Orno. At almost the same time, he was pulled towards him.

The Cenobite's face contorted in pure shock before Donovan grabbed him and tossed him into the wall of chains. With his own concentration broken, the chains had no real target and simply sunk into him like piranhas into a carcass.

"What about you, Orno? Does it hurt, Orno? Do you feel your pain? Or are you numb? Because there'll be so much more of where that came from!" Donovan shouted. As Orno tore his own chains out of himself, he grabbed him and piledrived him into the earth. He heard the breaking of bone and the ground gave way; a large hole showed exactly where Orno had penetrated the ground. He pulled him out and elbowed him in the jaw; Orno's jaw snapped to the side and a blue liquid gushed from his mouth. Orno's arm was twisted behind his back and broken like a twig. Feeling the bone already protruding, Donovan stood the dazed Cenobite on his feet for two seconds before punching him in the face. He was sent flying back at least forty feet.

Donovan's wounds had healed now, but so had Orno's, and at a much quicker speed. He stood up and stared at the Guardian with rage before he vanished yet again. This time, he was ready. Donovan fell onto his back and looked up; the next thing he saw was Orno appearing above him, diving down and ready to deliver a punch to his ribs. He kicked his legs up and was able to lightly strike Orno's chest and knock him down. Wasting no time, he sprang up and grabbed him before kicking him in his shins. They gave way to loud cracks and a toppled Orno. Groaning, the Cenobite tried to push himself up only to receive a punch to the nose. Blue liquid splashed out of the shattered appendage.

"You heathen…" Orno spat, unable to say anymore when the foot came down on his chest.

"You see, I don't like that term. Makes other religions seem like the product of a coked-up fantasy writer" Donovan mocked. Cenobite ribs broke under the pressure of the Guardian's foot. More blue liquid was coughed up by Orno. An electric orange light suddenly wrapped itself around his body.

Thanking God that it didn't scorch his foot, Donovan quickly removed it from his chest and watched as the light first enveloped Orno before seemingly combining with his body and taking his outline. With a _BOOM_, the orange outline of Orno exploded and scattered in all directions.

"And call me Guardian" Donovan told the now-gone Orno. He assessed the damage-a destroyed statue, a huge hole in the ground, a large gouge in the earth from when he had punched Orno, and a slew of fallen chains. He knew that this would all cost the cemetery much money, but what could he do? He was a loner, a wanderer. He didn't have any money to give to repair anything.

But at least his mother's grave still stood there. That was able to bring a slight smile to his face.

Donovan looked back at the puzzle box and walked over to it. Focusing, he imagined the box being lifted and then shot hundreds of feet away. It shook for a few seconds before it rose and then flew away into the distance.

His smile grew bigger with that.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

"_**YOU LET YOURSELF BE DEFEATED BY A GUARDIAN?!**_" Leviathan roared, or as best as he could roar in his language. Orno had returned to him with news, but it wasn't the type he wanted. That scoundrel, that young Donovan Randle boy-he had bested Orno, the master of the equations of the mind.

"I did not let him defeat me" Orno seethed. "I strategically retreated."

"_**LIKE A COWARD, YOU DID!**_"

"No, I did not perform any cowardice." Orno was doing his best not to scream like a lunatic, but his voice cracked. "I was caught off-guard by the boy's skill in hand-to-hand combat. I do not know where his combative acumen comes from, but I was certainly not expecting it. I had to retreat; if the fight was dragged out any longer, I could have killed him!"

"_**SO YOU SAY**_" Leviathan said. "_**IF YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF CONVINCING THIS GUARDIAN TO STAY WITH HIS DUTY, THEN WE MUST RESORT TO DRASTIC MEASURES. VIOLENT MEASURES. TO TAKE BACK A ROGUE, YOU MUST SEND A ROGUE.**_"

Orno looked at him in confusion. "I do not understand. What is the meaning of that cryptic phrase, my god?"

"_**DO YOU NOT REMEMBER WHO I TOLD YOU OF THE LAST TIME WE SPOKE? WHEN I SENT YOU ON YOUR FAILED MISSION?**_"

Orno still looked confused for several seconds. And then the realization swept through him and he was overcome by horror.

"But-you cannot! You must not! My god, you cannot be seriously considering sending _her_-!"

"_**I AM.**_"

(_**NEXT ISSUE: **_Another, much more brutal emissary of the Labyrinth is sent to try to convince Donovan to come back to Leviathan. And if that doesn't work, then the thousands of Detroiters at a campaign event will surely do. All this in _Guardian #4: A Pull of the String._)


	5. A Pull of the Chord

_#4: A Pull of the Chord_

Orno's steps were filled with hesitance as much as he was filled with disgust. She had defied the sacred law of Leviathan, the diamond-shaped god and creator of the Labyrinth. The rules and limits placed upon his people, the Cenobites, had been trampled upon by her bloodlust. He did not care for the humans any more than the next Cenobite, but what she had done was inexcusable. He wanted her executed, not continuing her pathetic existence in a cell. But she was what Leviathan wanted at the moment, and in a way, she was what he needed.

It took a criminal to catch a criminal, as the humans liked to say.

Two days ago, he had met Donovan Randle, a boy born in the city of Detroit, Michigan, United States, Earth. It had been the Randle boy's sixteenth birthday, the maturing point of the Guardians, creatures born of a human woman and a man implanted with Orno's own libido. Just as it had been and would be with all of the other Guardians, Orno had revealed Donovan's true species and destiny to him, complete with the puzzle box to the Labyrinth that he would guard over for the rest of eternity. But the young boy had gone rogue; Leviathan had lost his connection to Donovan, so the boy must have somehow been parted with his box. As it turned out, he had cast away his box after it had taken one human, and had preceded to fight crime in the city of Detroit using his fists. Orno had attempted to turn the boy back to the Labyrinth, only to be so shocked by his raw combative skill that he had been forced to retreat.

And now...now they were going to try again with _her._

Even in her heyday, she had not been much of the diplomatic type. Other Cenobites had taken notice of her craving for human pain, and of how slowly she shredded their flesh with the saws on her chains. Perhaps most unusually for a Cenobite, she often laughed while experimenting on people; it was a slow, enthusiastic chuckle, one that many humans emitted while murdering. But Leviathan and his favored Cenobite, the one known as Pinhead, had ignored these warning signs. And now, she was the weapon they needed. Again.

The twenty Minotaurs standing guard in front of her cell looked at him oddly when he stopped before them. They took turns looking at each other for answers, increasing Orno's impatience as he looked at their dry brown horns and pulsating muscles.

"What purpose do you have-?" one of them decided to ask when Orno shoved him aside.

He took out the key Leviathan had granted to him and soon, he was in her cell. It was pitch black inside; a good thing, then, that her skin was pale like that of every Cenobite. Black leather clung to all areas of her skin save for her inner chest, where two saw blades emerged from her deltoid and pectoralis major, and her wrists, where a vertical slit ran down the middle of each. Two circular saw blades were locked into the sides of her face, utterly ruining what could have been something so nice to look at. A black piece of metal was locked around her head, blinding her; likewise, her hands were locked together and her hands remained balled up into the fists they had been forced into right before the black leather gloves had been forced onto them.

"Some...some...someone is h-here...to see m-" she croaked before Onro silenced her with a punch to her jaw, splattering blue Cenobite blood onto the wall. Evidently, despite the many years she had been left in here, her hearing was as superb as any Cenobite's. Annoying as it was, it would be a useful ability if the rogue Guardian still refused his destiny.

Orno grabbed her by her left elbow, dragging her out of the cell with him and to the land that Leviathan hovered over. Everywhere they went, Cenobites, Minotaurs and Engineers stopped and glared at her with such disgust that Orno was glad that he was dragging her like the filth she was, or else they might have been glaring at him. Not even a Cenobite could stand being stared at by another denizen of the Labyrinth; their eyes were like the Labyrinth's chains and hooks-ripping into one and slowly pulling their skin off, tugging on their nerves and setting their senses ablaze. Some of the denizens even spat at her. Now that, he could stand.

Orno finally arrived at his destination and let go of the female Cenobite. Leviathan noticed this, emitting what was a growl in his language of clicks, clacks and snaps. Nodding in acknowledgement, Orno unlocked and removed the blindfold before stepping back.

It took her a while to recognize her surroundings. Years of being locked in a dark cell while also having a blindfold over your eyes could do that, Cenobite or otherwise. Nearly a minute had passed before she focused on Leviathan and grinned enthusiastically, hoping to instantly earn his favor after so many years.

"M-my god, Leviathan, my lord…" she gasped with fake joy. Everyone who wasn't a complete idiot could see that she was faking it, and Leviathan-being a god-was no exception. One of the black beams that flowed from his body and scanned the land washed over her. Even Orno grimaced at her shrieking, remembering the time he had been exposed to the beams; every one of his memories flashing before his eyes in a matter of seconds in the single digits, with even the barely existent nerves of a Cenobite screeching and pleading in pain, pain that was devoured by Leviathan, for even gods hungered.

The beam shifted away after a second and a half, leaving her a trembling and sobbing wreck on the ground. Leviathan "roared", the incredibly loud and drawn-out snap shaking the entire Labyrinth.

"_**YOU TAKE ME FOR A FOOL, DO YOU STILL? DO NOT ASK FOR ANY OF MY PITY, MY FORGIVENESS. SUCH TREASURES ARE NOT MEANT FOR THIEVES. FOOD IS NOT TO BE FED TO THE GLUTTONOUS.**_"

"My god! Leviathan! I understand your anger, but...but I come to redeem-" she attempted to beg before him. Attempted and failed, as Orno swore that if Leviathan possessed any fists, he would have brought them down and reduced her bones to dust.

"_**LIES FLOW FROM YOUR MOUTH LIKE BLOOD FROM A WOUND! YOU MAY BEG FOR YOUR REDEMPTION AS LOUDLY AS YOU PLEASE, BUT I DID NOT BRING YOU HERE TO NEGOTIATE SUCH MATTERS. NO, GREATER MATTERS TROUBLE THIS REALM AND OUR STABILITY, A MATTER MUCH LIKE YOU.**_"

"What?" she whispered.

Leviathan "laughed." "_**YOU BROKE THE SACRED LAWS THAT I UPHOLD. YOU KILLED A HUMAN, WHEN YOU KNEW AND KNOW THAT SUCH ACTIONS ARE FORBIDDEN. BUT SOMETHING EVEN WORSE HAS BESET US. A GUARDIAN ON EARTH HAS COME OF AGE, AND HE HAS CAST HIS BOX AWAY; I FEEL HIM NO LONGER. ORNO ATTEMPTED TO BRING HIM BACK TO US, BUT HE WAS FORCED TO RETREAT.**_"

"Retreat?" she said as a malicious grin grew over her face; she turned to look at Orno, who stared daggers at her.

"Well, who could have possibly thought that the great, all-knowing Orno would have been bested by a mere Guardian?"

"He did not best me!" Orno snapped at her. "I did not expect him to be so resilient and proficient in hand-to-hand combat, and so I cut my losses! Who have you defeated anyways, you cowardly rat? Humans who did not even know what was occurring? People with no skills to defend themselves? Yes, you are worthy of pointing out my flaws, you-!"

"_**ENOUGH!**_" Leviathan roared at both Orno and her. He turned back to her almost immediately.

"_**YOU WILL RETURN TO YOUR PUZZLE BOX, TAKING SURGEON'S PLACE FOR THE TIME BEING. ONCE IT IS SOLVED, YOU WILL MAKE YOUR WAY TO THE CITY OF DETROIT, MICHIGAN, UNITED STATES. THERE, YOU WILL FIND THE GUARDIAN NAMED DONOVAN RANDLE AND BRING HIM BACK TO US.**_"

"And what about me?" she asked the god. He chuckled in response.

"_**OF COURSE! IT IS ALWAYS ABOUT YOU, IS IT NOT? SHOULD YOU SUCCEED, YOU WILL BE ALLOWED TO SPEND YOUR DAYS IN PEACE AND YOUR NAME WILL BE SPOKEN BY YOUR KIN AGAIN. NOW GO AND FILL THE CRACK THAT HAS SEEPED INTO OUR LAND, CHAINSAW.**_"

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Donovan woke with a start. A noise rumbled from below him, forcing him to sit up in his sleeping bag. He groaned as the eleven hours of sleep started taking effect on his body. Six to eight hours of sleep? Okay. Nine or more? Even a Guardian would wake up feeling like they had been in a car accident.

Even though he had managed to drive off Orno when the Cenobite had tried to give that accursed box back to him, the battle had taken it's toll on him. He might have healed a lot faster than any human could, but his whole nervous system still felt like hell. Quick thinking still hadn't saved him from several hooked chains digging into the bones that composed his Guardian body. Afterwards, he had stopped three men from robbing a liquor store and murdering all seventeen people inside and had stopped a car from nearly running over four people trying to cross a street. After that, he was exhausted; he had flown to the nearest building rooftop, spread out his bag, shifted back to his human form and instantly drifted away.

The noise came back. Donovan looked down and realized that it was coming from his stomach. He hadn't eaten anything since Thursday, and that was because he didn't feel hungry at all. But now, he was; and it was overwhelming.

He knew he couldn't go to a restaurant or homeless shelter to eat anything, since the whole city probably knew that he was "missing" by now. But he obviously needed to eat. And he no matter how potentially powerful his healing factor might be, he wasn't going to take any chances by eating out of the garbage cans and dumpsters.

His superior hearing picked up a scraping noise nearby. Donovan turned around to see a squirrel running along the gutter of the building to his right. Thinking of an image of the squirrel on the gutter, he then thought of having it fly over to him. The squirrel soon started shaking, and it squealed uncontrollably before it flew over to him. Donovan caught it by its bushy tail before he brought his fist down onto its head; an ugly crunching noise pounded on his eardrums and blood burst out of the opposite side.

"_I'm being atta-!_"

_The man shrieked, his shriek being similar to a nail being struck with a saw blade._

Donovan clutched his face and struggled to contain his anger at himself. Six men had died because of his powers, men who had not stood a chance. He had failed to control himself, his Labyrinthine rage had clouded his mind-and thus, their chance at redemption had been lost. Who knew what kind of people those six men could have become if they had simply gone to prison or a mental hospital? Nobody on Earth could know, since only Donovan and Orno had even known that they had died.

He averted his sight from the blood and heard a chirping noise from below. Below, he saw three huge brown crickets, their antennae erratically twitching and their barbed legs digging into the trash. With telekinesis, Donovan raised the garbage bag up to the roof and grabbed the three insects before dropping the bag back down; a loud metallic explosion followed. Resisting the urge to run in horror as he felt the moist, segmented exoskeletons of the crickets, Donovan pressed with his superhuman strength and crushed the creatures into a hard collection of organic scrap. He then carefully placed the remains on the corpse of the squirrel before he picked the body up and bit into the part of the squirrel covered with the cricket remains. Surprisingly enough, such raw meat and dead insect didn't taste like the vomit that he had expected it to be. It was certainly not his grandmother's beer battered sirloin steak with the fat untrimmed, but it was still something. He couldn't be sure of any diseases possessed by animals, though; a source of heat would have to be found in the foreseeable future.

Concentrating on pushing out his "true" form while pulling his human body into his mind, Donovan picked up his sleeping bag and stood at the edge of the roof; where an average sixteen year old boy had once been, now stood a seven foot tall human skeleton, the bones thicker than they should have been and eight bones emerging from his back and shoulders, each group of four forming a wing. What should have been a human skull by all means was instead the skull of a dragon, fangs on display and horns curving from the temples. No eyes were needed in the sockets to see; no ears were needed to hear. Straining while moving his shoulders and straightening his back, strength was built up in his wings, moving turning into flapping.

The seconds were counted; flight needed to come faster. It took him ten minutes to take flight, and in the meantime, lives could be on the line. Time that could have been spent repairing Detroit was wasted on building up the speed of his wings; thus, he moved his shoulders at an agonizing speed while constantly keeping his back as straight as possible. He leaped off, taking to the air before he hit the ground. Six minutes before takeoff; a new record.

"Holy shit, is that-?!" a voice from below gasped.

"What's his name again?" a woman asked.

Donovan rose to an altitude of approximately two hundred feet. He didn't know the limit of his hearing, so he figured it was better to be safe than sorry. A whole multitude of awful things could happen if he was one thousand feet in the air and he couldn't hear a thing.

"I like to hear you squeal."

"He squeals like an animal he can't even fucking eat!"

Donovan flew towards the source of the noise. A man was screaming, begging to be left alone, to learn why this was happening to him.

"Why did this happen to two thousand nine hundred ninety seven people? Why did this happen to my nephew?" one of the men asked. "It's the exact same reason, you piece of dog shit-we don't like you!"

He had heard enough. Donovan flew down to where he was ten feet above them and then released the tension in his shoulders and back. Landing on his feet and hands, he just barely avoided embarrassing himself before the two men he was about to stop.

"What the fuck?" the white man yelled. "Is that-is...damn it! What's his name again?"

"It's that Guardian bitch!" the black man sneered. "Well I guess you came here to beat us up, huh? Is that how you solve every problem that doesn't have shit to do with you?"

"You're one to talk!" Donovan spat, pointing at the bleeding and downed man before them. "You confront and assault a man because of his religion, and you try to scold _me _for resorting to force?"

"This faggot's religion is a bullshit cult! Murdering innocent people because they disagree with them! You call that a religion?"

"Seems like you were willing to beat this man to death because you disagreed with his religion. Really, you two are proving to be greater and greater hypocrites with every word that comes out of your mouths. And I don't particularly like hypocrites."

"That so?" the black man said. "Because we don't really like you either, Guardian!" They both charged at him, the black man with his crowbar and the white man with his wrench. Donovan ripped the crowbar out of the black man's hands before laying a hammerfist into his left temple, knocking him out. He then batted the wrench out of the white man's hand with the crowbar before uppercutting him on the jaw, forcing his head back and slamming his brain into his skull; he instantly blacked out.

Donovan dropped the crowbar and walked over to the wounded man. His right elbow was broken and his left leg was twisted in an angle it shouldn't have been. Carefully, he picked the man up and sat him against the wall.

"How do you feel, sir?" he asked him. He knew it was a stupid question, as stupid as asking him if he was okay; the man's body was clearly throbbing with the utmost pain, and if he didn't get medical attention soon, he could die.

"I feel...oh" the man breathed. "Something inside me is broken…"

"I know."

"I need to go to the hospital ri-" the man was saying when his eyes fully opened and he looked at Donovan. High blood pressure was the last thing the man need at the moment.

"Allah! Oh no, Allah help me, y-yo-you're-!"

"I am Guardian, yes" he nodded as he squeezed the man's hand. "It's okay, sir, I'm not going to hurt you. I've stopped those men. I need your phone so I can call 911 and give them our location. Can you tell me where your phone is?"

The man was breathing heavily for several seconds before he said, "Right pocket on my jeans." Nodding, Donovan dug his hand into the pocket and pulled out the man's phone before he dialed 911.

"911, what is your-"

"Listen to me. I'm at the intersection of 2795 E. Grand Boulevard and 2817 E. Grand Boulevard. I'm with a wounded man right now; it looks like his shoulder and left leg are broken. He's bleeding badly, so you need to come right now. I've managed to subdue the attackers, so you'll need to tell the cops to come as well."

"Sir, can you repeat your location?"

"We are at the intersection of 2795 E. Grand Boulevard and 2817 E. Grand Boulevard" Donovan told the call-taker, this time slowing his voice down.

"First responders are being sent to your location right now, sir. They will arrive in approximately four minutes."

"Okay, thank you" he said to her before hanging up. It was three minutes before the police and emergency sirens could be heard, growing closer and closer. Donovan went back to pick up his sleeping bag before returning to the man.

"I have to go now. The first responders will be here very soon, and I want you to hang in there when they come. Can I trust you to do that?" he asked him.

"Y-yeah, I-I-I think s-..." the man muttered before he closed his eyes and breathed slowly. Donovan took one last look at the two unconscious assailants and at the man before he ran away from the scene. The sirens clawed at his hearing as they zeroed in on the crime scene.

While on the run, Donovan saw a barbershop up ahead. He remembered being taken to the place once by his grandfather for a haircut. The scent of shaving cream overwhelmed his sense of smell, making him retch; although he didn't have a stomach, nausea pulsated through him, the urge to expel the squirrel meat and crushed cricket reaching his head.

He fought back the nausea while creeping closer and closer to the barbershop. Donovan had taken great pains to avoid being seen as he ran from the crime scene, but something was being said on the TV. Talk about a man named Freddie having been "sucked dry" in Baltimore, a vampiric beast that called itself "Lifeblood", a video tape found next to the corpse.

"We will have to warn our viewers that this video may be particularly disturbing" the news anchor said right as Donovan peered through the window. On the TV screen, he saw a blue-greenish creature looking into a camera in a dark room. It's nose was large and somewhat pink, like a bat's. It's forehead was ridged and not a single strand of fur was visible on it's body. Eyes that were like smooth black marbles shined somewhat, and as it's mouth opened, enormous yellow fangs were displayed.

"For centuries I have hidden; feared humanity as I drank from them" it said with a rasp, as if though it's throat was sore. "But in this world of today, my opportunities of feeding have become practically nonexistent. While humans get to enjoy their loves ones mourning over them as they are slaughtered, I must continue to live with what my father did to my mother. What he created cannot sustain itself for much longer. I have a simple ultimatum for you humans-either you find a cure so that I may continue living without the need for the life force, or I kill the people in this city, one every-"

"God" Donovan muttered. He blocked out the sound and turned away. What had the world come, forcing creatures like this to kill people? Slender Man, The Pocket and now this "Lifeblood"-not a single one spared lives. And this "Lifeblood"-it devoured the life force of innocent people. How could it think this was the best course of action? It could have helped people like him, turn it's supposed darkness into a force for good-but no, it had chosen to employ extremism. How was it that he had chosen to save lives while this creature took them? How could their mindsets be so far removed?

"Does it not know that humans do not care for it?" a feminine voice sneered behind him. Donovan turned to see another Cenobite, and a female one at that-and not even remotely attractive. Black leather clung to her skin so tightly, her breasts seemed to have been shoved in, and there seemed to be no distinction between her flesh and bones. Her skin was pale, like all other Cenobites, and her eyes like blown-out fuses. Utterly dead inside. But there was something quite distinct about this Cenobite. Two saw blades protruded from her chest, while a circular saw blade was locked into each side of her face. And on closer examination, he saw two large slits running down the bottom of her arms.

"Let me guess-you've been sent here to try to make me protect that box again, haven't you?" Donovan rheotircally asked her. The woman smiled and laughed at that. He didn't want it, but she walked up to him and slapped him on the shoulder.

"Leviathan and Orno told me nothing of your intelligence! Ah, yes, so wise and astute. Most especially for a Guardian so young as you are! My, how wisdom is wasted upon the elderly" she praised. Donovan removed her arm and looked straight into her dead eyes; if her intention was to flatter him, then she would have to try far harder than that generic trick.

"Answer my question" he demanded. Her smile faded and she regained her composure.

"You are correct in your observations...Donovan Randle. I have been sent to instruct you as to the error of your ways; to reprimand your for your foolishness, but also, to offer you forgiveness."

"The error of my ways? My foolishness?" Donovan repeated. Was she really saying this? Was this seriously how those of the Labyrinth viewed actually being a good person? Or did she get something lost in translation?

"Yes. I ask you this-why do you try to fight for these humans? To protect them? They fear and hate you for what you are, Donovan. You are a demon, a beast to these imbeciles. But they love you when they see your box in your hand" she tried to explain to him. He still wasn't buying any of it.

"That's because those puzzle boxes most likely emit a pheromone that arouses the individual" he scoffed, trying to explain the existence of the boxes at the same time. "And of course they're scared of me. I'm a seven foot tall dragon skeleton! But how do you know they're still scared when I help them? Have you overheard any conversations where people are saying, "Some ugly monster saved me! What a jerk!"? And please, don't call every human being an imbecile. That's just so childish and narrow minded."

"They give you nothing in return!" the woman scoffed. "Leviathan at least gives you not just a sense of purpose, but an actual objective in life! He provides roder!"

"Objective? You mean having people torn to shreds because of their urges? Helping people has actual meaning to it; I'm doing something _good. _Go on, tell me no sane person would do this; everything that has benefitted humanity had been called madness in its day."

"Stupid Guardian! You are a pathetic moron, that's all you truly are!" the woman spat. "Why am I wasting my time trying to negotiate with a human-loving lower caste like you? Let me give you one more chance-either you come back to your destiny, or I will have you executed."

"What's your name?" Donovan asked her. She was taken aback.

"Are you truly asking me that now? What difference does it make as to what my name is?"

"Please, I just want to know who I'm talking to."

The woman extended a mechanical saw from the slit in her arm. "Chainsaw" she answered.

"Well Chainsaw, you know what I want you to do? Take one of those rusty saw blades of yours, introduce it to your colon. You look like you could release some of that tension you've got. Maybe it'll fix your attitude too."

"How dare-!"

"Oh, and send my regards to Orno!" Donovan called out as he walked away. "Ask him if he still feels a bit sore. Maybe you could help him with that tension problem you both have."

And with that, he left to see what the rest of Saturday had in store.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Chainsaw tightened her fist as the boy walked away. The blood leaving her knuckles wasn't visible through her pale skin, though it the bones nearly breaking out of their hands was unmistakable. She had served the Labyrinth longer than he was alive. How could he dare to talk down to her like that? Who did this Randle child think he was? Nobody treated her like that! Not Orno, not Pinhead and most certainly not him.

_Does that arrogant infant not recognize his status amongst Leviathan's beings?_, she raged in her head, as she watched the Guardian walk away and disappear. Striding so pompously, disrespect in every step he took, foolishness running up his spine with his confident posture. Haughtiness was not for the Guardians. They were meant to be vagabonds among men, dirty animals with their eyes set on their boxes, the only meal that mattered to them.

She could have taught him a lesson. Struck him down right then and there. Nobody could hear teleportation, and he most likely had no idea how to defend himself from a surprise attack. That had been Orno's mistake. Engaging one in "honorable" combat always posed the risk of losing so dishonorably.

But as always, the humans cared more for their bread and circuses rather than any actual issues. And so, she heard the news switch from a murderous bat-humanoid to giddy talk about a woman named Hillary Clinton and if her arrival in Detroit tomorrow indicated her run for an officer known as "President of the United States."

_Typical humanity_, Chainsaw mocked. _They cannot stand that which is more powerful than them, that which they do not understand. And so, they turnt heir attention to-_

_-wait._

_Tommorrow._

Chainsaw laughed into the sky. What good was attacking this Guardian right now when she could send a message to the people he so wished to protect? So many humans herded at once, like the moronic cattle that they were. Leviathan had strictly commanded her to not kill any more humans…

...but would he really mind if she brought back the traitor?

Yes, tomorrow. It was settled. If Donovan Randle truly saw himself as one of these rodents, then surely a piece of him would die as so many of them did, no?

(_**NEXT ISSUE: **_Chainsaw attacks a political event where so many Detroiters have gathered. Donovan has already forced one Cenobite to retreat. But Chainsaw is not Orno at all. Is there even a shred of hope for him as he faces a relentless, murderous opponent who will either take him or die trying? All this in _Guardian #5: A Pull of the Chord #2._)


End file.
